


Face to the Dirt, Backs Toward God

by exposedlove



Category: The Devil All the Time (2020), tom holland - Fandom
Genre: 1950s, 1960s, Actor Tom Holland, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Romance, Arvin Russell - Freeform, Attempted Sexual Assault, Black Character(s), Black OC, BookFics, Canon - Book, Corrupt Religion, Corruption, Drama & Romance, Eventual Romance, Eventual Sex, F/M, Filming, Films, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Friends to Lovers, Heavy Angst, High School, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Interracial Relationship, Literature, Major Original Character(s), Murder, Murderers, Mutual Pining, Original Character(s), PoC character, Possessive Tom, Post-High School, Religion, Religious Conflict, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Romance, Sexual Assault, Star-crossed, Stereotypes, Summer Romance, Teen Romance, The Devil All The Time - Freeform, Tragic Romance, bad boy, bad boy Tom Holland, black girl, book: The Devil All the Time, bookfic, star-crossed lovers, tom holland - Freeform, vintage
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:27:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 24,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26187184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exposedlove/pseuds/exposedlove
Summary: Arvin Russell had only one person who may have been able to save him from the first shot that started his murderous vengeance.Her name was Lucy James and he wanted her in every way that he could not have her.—"He looked at her form as she laid on her side, slender arm propping up her head and she traced the checkboard pattern of the ratty blanket with her free hand. She was shaped like a glass coke bottle, a dip at her waist, and a curve at her hips. Arvin recalled all the times he used to lick the many beads of water straight off of the glass."
Relationships: Arvin Russell/OC, Arvin Russell/Original Character
Comments: 40
Kudos: 117





	1. One

“Hey son, you don’t mind if my colored girl waits on ya, do ya?”

Arvin snuck a glance from under his cap at the colored girl the man was mentioning. She was scrubbing at a stain on the counter that Arvin had never seen cleaned. Her big curly hair was tied into a ponytail at the top of her head by a pink ribbon. Her jaw sharp and her eyes big. 

“Yeah, sure. No problem.” Arvin replied. 

“Alright, thanks, kid.” The fat man responded. 

The man, Jack, his name tag said, wiped his hands on his grease-stained white shirt that was pulled so tight against his potbelly that Arvin could see the circle of his belly button.

“Lucinda!” he bellowed and his hanging, fat chin jiggled. When she turned to him, big eyes widened even bigger and dark eyelashes scraping her brow bone, Jack snapped his fingers and pointed at the counter space in front of Arvin, “this man needs to be served.”

Jack raised the corners of his lips at Arvin in acknowledgment, slapped the counter in front of him, and headed to the kitchen. The swinging door was hanging on by the top hinge only. When Jack swung it open, Arvin saw a pack of four waitresses, all huddled around one lighter flame trying to light their own cigarettes. 

“Hello, sir. What can I start you off with?” The colored waitress said in a voice that was both deep and light. It was a voice he could feel rumble straight from her sternum and shoot into his, its timbre raising the hair on his arms but was still unmistakably drenched in the sweetness of woman. 

The name tag on her left breast read ‘Lucy.’ Arvin only knew of blonde-haired, white girls with stiff curls being named Lucy. His eyes darted to her face. A broad nose with a defined bridge that pointed to her full, heart-shaped lips like an arrow. Her face was shone with light dew that may have been sweat, but he didn’t dwell on it much. She had called him sir, but she couldn’t have been any younger than him.

“Hi, uh, I’ll just have a black coffee.”

“Sure thing. You still need to look over your menu?”

“Yea.”

“Alrighty,” she said. When she turned, Arvin examined her from the back. Her straight skirt only flowed at its tattered ends and cut off above the knees. The rest of the material clung tightly to her full bottom half. The ends of the skirt swished as she walked. Arvin looked at a pair of two white men with prickly stubble and hollow grey eyes as they traced Lucy, her body, up and down. One drank his coffee with a look Arvin only saw on a Saturday night at the bar and the other jabbed the other man in the ribs with his elbow. Jack had served the two men their food and drinks when Arvin walked in.

“Here you are, sir,” Lucy said to him. She poured the coffee into his already stained cup. She set it down quickly and looked straight into his eyes when she asked, “can I get you anythin to eat?”

“Yeah,” Arvin mumbled and then cleared his throat. He scratched at the laminated menu with his short, dirty fingernails. “I’ll just have some sausage links. And an over-easy egg.”

And minutes later, when Lucy sat a plate of sausage and two eggs in front of him, Arvin noticed that the men were still snickering and coughing loudly at the other end of the counter. Lucy went back to scrubbing at the same stain and one of the white waitresses huddled in the back finally emerged, after Jack swatted her ass, and approached the two men with a lopsided smile. The men stopped snickering and Lucy kept scrubbing. Arvin wanted to hear what those men were saying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some of the tags may or may not end up fully aligning with the story. not majors ones, but some. if that irks u i apologize, but girl's gotta do what she's gotta do to possibly get maybe more than -2 people to read a story that has one other fandom work on this site.
> 
> this is my [twitter](https://twitter.com/nsfcypher) in case u wanna yell at me for the possibility of not matching tags, or if you want to be nice and give me a follow and tell me what you think/thought
> 
> or if you want to talk about The Devil All the Time!!!!! i havent stopped thinking about this fucking book ever since i read it!!!!


	2. Two

The cigarette hung loosely from Arvin’s lips. He waited to light it. He ran his tongue along its paper outside, barely wetting it. He felt his eyebrows pulled tightly together as he looked out at the piles of tires and the rusting metal drum barrels, some with holes where weeds were twisting out of. The white screen door creaked open and slammed shut faster than it opened. Arvin turned his head to look out of reflex. Lucy, he saw, with her head down as she removed the name tag pinned to her chest.

Her brown eyes met his and he saw her eyes grow wide again before they melted into a small, close-mouthed smile. Sure enough, on the side of the building next to her was the word ‘COLOREDS’ scratched into the peeling white paint. Lucy started to walk.

“Hey, uh,” Arvin spoke before he was ready to. When she turned around to face him, Arvin forgot he had spoken. Although her face was like a slate wiped clean, no imperfections nor emotions visible from where he stood, Arvin forgot how to make words roll off of his tongue.

“Why’d your boss call you ‘Lucinda’? Your names Lucy, innit?” He said lowly.

“Yeah,” she said with that dagger for a voice, “on my first day he told me he needed to give me a nickname.”

“And that’s what he chose, huh?”

“Yeah,” she signed and dropped her name tag in the pocket of her apron. Arvin saw the corner of it poking out from a hole at the bottom of the pocket.

Lucy looked up at him for a lick of a second, taking in his tanned skin, littered with white scars along his forearms and his face that sat strongly at the helm of his body. The green eyes that she felt examine all of her, all at once.

“Can I ask you a question, sir?”

“Seems only fair.”

“Why’re you parked back here? And not out front?”

Arvin dug his teeth slightly into his cigarette. “Wanted a little privacy while I smoked,” and for emphasis, he leaned into his Bel Air to grab the lighter resting on top of his dash.

Lucy watched as he lit his cigarette, not looking up at her. She turned away wordlessly and stepped over the fresh muddy tire tracks.

The cigarette lit after his first real try and Arvin took a long drag as he watched her, Lucy, grow smaller among the trees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [twt](https://twitter.com/nsfcypher)


	3. Three

At the end of his fourth week working with the construction crew, Arvin hung outside of the diner where Lucy worked. He hadn’t gone in yet. After he ashed his cigarette he put it back in his mouth. The Bel Air’s engine had been quiet for a while. Arvin looked through the stained yellow windows of the diner that were lined with flies. A few of the white waitresses inside were actually working, filling up coffee cups and talking with customers. Their red-painted lips were just as vibrant through the dirt-caked windows. Their lips flapped rapidly and Arvin watched the sweaty old men they were charming fall right into their traps, all the way to the one-dollar tips they slid to the young girls across the counter.

Customers came and went, each wrinkle ridden old man came out looking smugger than the last, yet Arvin still couldn’t see Lucy. 

He hadn’t seen her at all. It was a Thursday, the beginning of the end of the workweek for big shots, but not the end for him, and he assumed, her. The conversation they had weeks ago barely lasted a minute, yet he still thought of her often, in brief, passing moments. He thought of her when the sun was beating down on him while he was putting down the coat of blacktop. The black tar dark enough to remind him of his coffee but too dark to remind him of her skin. When he was sweating and wiping the beads of sweat that slid down his forehead down to his eyelashes, he thought of the first time he heard her deep voice and saw her figure in that uniform that clung to her. Then, he would gather up the end of his shirt, wipe his brow dry, and continue laying down the blacktop.

Arvin lit his cigarette one last time. The white dirt crunched under his black work boots as he stepped out of his car and shut the door with a loud bang. 

He finally went in and sat on the backless stool at the counter. A waitress clocked his entrance immediately. She wore a nametag that had the name ‘Elizabeth’ with a dark black line through it and the word ‘Lizzy’ written crudely in the small white space underneath. Maybe it was the nickname Jack gave her, Arvin thought, maybe it wasn’t.

“Hi,” she said as she approached him with a menu in her hand. Her voice was pitched unnaturally high and had a twang that she would never be able to mask. “What’s your name?” she asked instead of taking his order.

“Arvin,” he stated with a blank face.

“Well, _Arvin_ , I’ve never seen you ‘round here before. The only people who eat here are regulars.”

He didn’t despise her, she had done nothing wrong, but having a waitress that would rather talk his ear off than serve him wasn’t something he ever desired. Maybe, he thought, she would probably give him an insight to where Lucy was. Women like her talked forever about nothing.

“Yeah, well, I’ve been here before. Just a few times, though.” He told her, Elizabeth.

“Oh really? I’ve never heard any of the other girls talk about you!”

“Do y'all always talk about your customers?”  


“Only the cute ones.” 

Arvin saw that coming, but he still smiled at the compliment.

“Mmm, well it’s nice to hear that.”

“Of course. I meant it too, honey. Who served you when you came last?”

“A girl named Lucy.”

“Oh,” Elizabeth said flatly. She finally slid the menu over to him. “That’s why I never heard of you. Lucy don’t talk to us much.”

Arvin flipped his menu over to the lunch side. He found it hard to believe that Lucy was the reason why a group of white waitresses never talked to the only black waitress on staff.

When Arvin didn’t respond, Elizabeth pushed out her chest and kept talking, “Beats me why she doesn’t, though.”

“I’m sure it does.”

He watched Elizabeth nervously drum her chipped nails against the counter. Before she could bring up something Arvin didn’t give two shits about just to keep flirting with him, Arvin decided to cut to the chase.

“Where is she, anyway?”

“Who?” Elizabeth looked surprised. She knew who they were both thinking about, but it didn’t sit right within her that a good looking man was right in front of her and thought his menu and a colored waitress were more interesting than she was.

“Lucy. Is she not here today?”

“Oh, yeah,” Elizabeth huffed and rubbed at the counter with the pad of her thumb. “She’s in the back I think, I don’t know.”

“You’re not sure?”

“No. I’m not.”  


Arvin saw a cheeseburger on the menu. One of the cheapest items. 

“I’ll just take two of these,” he looked at Elizabeth, pointing at the cheeseburger on the menu, “to go, please. With some fries.”

––––

Arvin was leaning against his car door and already looking at the back door when she came out.

Only a part of Lucy’s hair was tied up, tied into a high ponytail at the top of her head with the pink ribbon that was fraying at the ends. Her hair didn’t look as curly today. It was straighter, grazing her shoulders, but still had poof and volume to it as it lay. There were wet spots all over the top of her uniform.

“Oh,” she said when she saw Arvin waiting in front of her. “Hi, uh–”

“Arvin,” he said with a smile.

“Arvin. Hi.”

“I got some cheeseburgers.”

“That’s nice.” she smiled and turned to leave.

“No, I mean, uh, I have an extra. You hungry?”

She turned back around and cocked her head while she silently appraised him.

“ _You_ are offering _me_ food?”

Arvin shrugged and tried to look nonchalant. He liked the way the end of her nose lifted when she scrunched her face. “Yeah. Food and a ride,” he knocked on the hood of his car, “if you want one. Or both.”

“You realize what you’re doing right now?”

“Yeah, offering you a ride. And food.”

“No, you’re offering a colored girl food and a ride.”

“Yeah. That too.”

Lucy sat there. Her face relaxed, but with an eyebrow still raised. The white boy she met weeks ago was here, just like she imagined. When she would think of him, she gave him all sorts of names, white boy names she would hear when they would stop by the diner. None of them seemed to fit. She didn’t think Arvin fit too well either, but she wasn’t his momma.

Arvin opened his door as a second invitation. For a colored girl to get in a white boy’s car, even if he was handsome, was simply stupid. She could feel her momma shaking her by the ear. Arvin was nice; he didn’t let her wait on him out of pity that first time he came into the diner and the dollar tip he left had burned a hole in her pocket for a week before she finally allowed herself to spend it on something frivolous. 

Lucy put her hands into the front of her apron pocket and walked toward Arvin and his car.


	4. Four

Dusk was settling. The sky wasn’t painted with vibrant orange or purple. Faint blue bled into the dark abyss of the sky and the only bright thing visible was the moon. They were crawling around town in the Bel Air, only going about 20 miles per hour. No one was out on a Friday night, either in a bar or at home. Arvin looked over at Lucy from the corner of his eye. The windows were down and her hand bobbed up and down as she let it ride the waves of the wind.

“Do your parents care that you’re out so late?” He asked Lucy.

“No, they don’t give a lick,” she took a moment to sigh. “As long as I bring home a good ‘nough paycheck. That’s how they keep their tabs on me.”

Lucy leaned her head against the shoulder of the passenger seat. Arvin shrugged. He supposed colored parents didn’t have to care about their kids, either.

He looked at her again and debated on pulling over right then, just so he could properly look at her again, but he figured driving around alone with him was nerve-wracking enough as is. Neither one of them had touched the cheeseburgers yet.

“I bet the cheeseburgers are getting cold.” He broke the silence again. “You want yours?”

“Sure. Are you gonna eat yours?”

“Yeah, but I was gonna offer it to you first.”

She rolled her head over to glare at Arvin. He realized then that she gave him dirty looks more often than she had ever smiled at him. It made him smile as he looked down at Lucy and her slouched position in his passenger seat.

“Absolutely not.” She said and propped herself up with an elbow and reached for the grease-stained bag. “You’re having one.”

“Is it okay if I park here?” Everywhere in Knockemstiff, Ohio was surrounded by woods, but in the dark, the forest limbs extended to shadows reached farther, almost scraping at the car windows. The only light they had was the burning end of his cigarette and the banged-up military flashlight in his backseat. He left it on for backlight and it flickered when they hit any bump in the road. 

“Yeah,” she looked around with the two cheeseburgers in her hands, “if you were to do something to me now, I figure you probably would’ve done it already.”

Arvin breathed harshly out of his nose as a lazy laugh. Where he parked, halfway into the dark dirt on the shoulder of the road and the other half of the car on the blacktop, the car laid at a tilt. Arvin switched the engine off and it gently purred. Lucy was already turned facing him.

“So,” she started, unwrapping her cheeseburger after she handed Arvin’s to him, “are you rich or somethin?”

“Why you ask that?”

“Well,” she took a bite and swallowed, “you leave a girl a dollar tip just for some eggs and coffee, and then you show up outside of her work with dinner already bought.”

Arvin ashed his cigarette.“Hm, I suppose I did do that.”

Lucy glared him again, her large brown irises almost stealing away all of the whites of her eyes. She took another bite instead of humoring him with a response.

Arvin smiled at the glare he was slowly beginning to enjoy so much, “well, I did notice that _someone_ fried me an extra egg.”

She rolled her eyes. “That could’ve been the cook for all you know.”

“Jack?”

“Mhmm,” she hummed as she chewed her second bite.

“Yeah, the guy who pawned me off on you, and then went into the backroom to flirt with some waitresses was the person who fried me an extra egg.”

“That’s all that pig does.”

“What?” Arvin finally took his first bite.

“Flirt with those white girls. That’s all he does.”

“Does he flirt with you?”

Lucy stopped her chewing to look at him blankly. She held up her forearm. “Do you see this color, sir? You think he flirts with me?”

“Do you look in the mirror? You’re pretty. Prettier than all those girls could hope to be.”

Lucy looked at him skeptically. She slowly set her cheeseburger down on her lap. Arvin saw her shoulders slightly shift as the pulled together tightly. The face she wore was stone but fiery, yet her body language was shrinking for the first time since he’d known her.

Arvin quickly added on, thinking she was curious about his words more than anything. “Gorgeous, I’d say.” He was nervous, but he smiled and leaned in toward her. Lucy didn’t move for a while. Then, she slowly leaned away.

Lucy felt her heart begin to beat a little quicker. The smile on Arvin's face looked like it curled at the ends. His teeth looked sharper in the shadows and he was leaned toward her, only inches preventing him from grabbing her with those hands that almost doubled her own. Suddenly, for the first time, his body was a threat and not an invitation. Large biceps that poked from under his shirt sleeves and his chest that looked as solid as a brick wall scared her. She was ashamed to have forgotten who he was and who she was, just a colored girl. The spit she tried to swallow wouldn't go down. She realized no one would care what he chose to do to her. Whatever he wanted.

“What do you want with me? Why’d bring me here, buy me this food?”

“Lucy, I just think you’re pretty. C’mon now.”

“I’m beginning to think I shouldn’t ‘ve gotten in this car with you.”

“I just meant it as a genuine compliment.”

“So do you have a thing for colored girls or just me?”

“No–”

“And I don’t trick for money, if that’s what you thought a cheeseburger was gonna buy you.”

“Lucy, no, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”

She turned around and faced forward in the seat. The cheeseburger still laid in her lap. Suddenly, Arvin remembered he bought fries for them both. He turned the ignition on, but didn’t drive. He put both hands on the wheel and started to lightly scratch his fingernails along the worn leather. Cicadas outside began to scream into the night, but he could still hear Lucy’s breathing above all.

"Lucy, c'mon I'm sorry," he continued.

Lucy said nothing. She began to pick at the skin around her thumbs rapidly. Arvin saw her fingers jerk and twitch as her hands trembled.

"C'mon, like you said, If I wanted to do anything to you I woulda done it by now."

Lucy kept her head high, but still picked at her fingers. She held her breath. She had stood up for herself, but she just knew her fat mouth had pissed him off. And she was still alone with him, in the woods, in the middle of the night. The veins of his large hands that bubbled underneath his skin as he repeatedly tightened and loosened his grip on the wheel caught her eye. She focused on the thick trunk of a tree that was near the road.

"I didn't mean to put you off, honest. C'mon, Lucy. I don't think of you like that. We just met."

When Lucy still didn't respond or move, Arvin sighed and hung his head low.

“Do you want me to take you home?”

“That’s probably best,” she said quietly.

He drove back to the diner out of instinct.

The crunch of the gravel underneath them was the only sound in the night. Flickering neon lights from the shops and restaurants as they drove into town were the only sources of light that bounced inside the car’s cabin. Hues of red and blue swiped across the slope of Lucy’s nose. Arvin learned then that he hated the frown on her face as much as he grew to love her scowl.

She only spoke to tell Arvin where to turn and sometimes she didn’t even do that. Her slender fingers sometimes would flick to the left or the right to tell him where to go. The trees were bending down toward the road when she finally spoke again.

“Stop here, please.”

Arvin slowed down but didn’t stop as he looked around. No houses were in sight.

“Here?”

“Yeah.”

He finally stopped. Out of reflex, his arm moved to put his cigarette back between his lips. When he only tasted the salt of his skin, he realized he never lit another.

“Why here?”

“If my daddy saw me coming out of some white boy’s car past dark, he’d never let me out of the house again.”

Arvin sighed. It made sense.

“What if I was a negro?” He asked without thinking.

She opened the car door, “Then he probably wouldn’t think I was whoring for money,” she said and hopped out and shut the door with a bang. “But he’d probably still ask if I was pregnant.”

Arvin drummed his fingers along the wheel of his car. He couldn’t picture her with a boy and wondered if she’d ever had a boyfriend in her life.

“What’s your last name?” She pulled him out of his thoughts.

“Russell.”

“Russell. Bye, Arvin Russell.”

“What’s yours?”

She hesitated to tell him. “James.”

“Lucy James. Can I come see you at the diner again, Lucy James?”

“You’re white. You’re free to do whatever you like. But I think those girls I work with would like to see you more than I would.”

“Oh yeah?”

She rolled her eyes and Arvin could barely see the curve of her lips in the darkness. Or maybe he imagined it, but she wore anything better than sadness.

“ _Yeah_. And I’m not inflating your ego anymore.” She patted the car again and said with a voice dripped in honey, “Bye, Arvin.”

She walked away quickly, adjusting the strap of her satchel nearly slipping off every step of the way.

“Bye, Lucy.”

He looked down and sat his half-eaten cheeseburger next to hers in the passenger seat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [twt](https://twitter.com/nsfcypher)


	5. Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n: if you havent read the book: emma is Arvin's grandmother that he lives with. there was no way to slip that in in a natural way
> 
> also content warning-  
> there's some pretty fatphobic language in this chapter

Only a week passed this time before Arvin stepped inside the diner.

He thought about her all week. The way her straightened hair looked that night, how the light radiated through her dark skin and made her a neon angel. He thought of her the Sunday morning of that same week he picked her up. And he thought of the way he had only seen her in her work uniform and how he still couldn’t get enough. The pink material that clung to her skin in the ways he wished he could. The wood was stiff and pushed back against his knees as he kneeled next to Emma in prayer on that Sunday in Church. He stopped praying after his mother died and whenever he played pretend in the chapel for Emma’s sake, he usually thought of nothing. But on that Sunday, he thought of her, the smile and glares he had never seen. And the parts of her had never touched. He never felt the burn of his skin to hers, melting together. He had never even grazed her hand yet. Never felt her skin burst in between his fingers and the fierce heartbeat of hers that surely was pounding against the surface. The chapel was too hot for him that Sunday.

That work week was torture for him. Constantly playing between wanting to go in, see her, apologize and wanting to stay away and give her distance.

But when he was told he was off on the weekend, that’s when his decision was made.

When he came inside the diner the night was already dark. There was only about an hour until close. Still, men were lining the counter, draping half of their sweaty bodies over to get closer to the young waitresses who served them. One man sat in a booth, head tipped back and mouth open as he slept amongst the noise.

Arvin sat down at the counter. His leg started to bounce when he didn’t see Lucy anywhere. One of the waitresses came over, she had frizzy ginger hair and a dark mole on her chin. Her tits bounced as each heel of hers punched the title floor and the yellow smile she gave to Arvin made his leg bounce even more.

“Hi sweetheart, how’re you?” She handed the menu to him with a dramatic flip of her wrist. Her name tag said ‘Cindy.’

“I’m good, thanks.”

She leaned over. The top of her uniform had the first two buttons undone and when she folded her arms under them, Arvin was sure she’d spill out of her bra if she took too deep a breath. He lifted his gaze and met her eyes. Cindy winked at him and ran her tongue along her teeth. Arvin smelled the faint whiff of menthol from her pale tongue.

“What’s your name?”

Arvin still stared at her. Her greasy grin never broke. “Elizabeth didn’t tell you?”

Cindy cackled and Arvin found that he didn’t like that about her either. “She probably did.” she ceased her dramatics and slapped a hand on her exposed chest, “she told me a bit ago about some real cute guy, said he was tan and built, not like these other slobs who come in here. Said he was cute, too, with a voice that made her wet where she stood.” She put back on her lopsided smile and rested her chin in her hand. “That sound like you?”

“Nope.” Arvin stopped looking at her green eyes that were lined with flaking eyeliner and focused on his menu. “Is Lucy here?”

“Huh? Lucy?”

“Yes.”

“Why’re you concerned about her?”

“So she _is_ here, then.”

Arvin peeked up at her again and she was standing rod straight, eyebrows raised by surprise and mouth crooked open in disgust. He thought Cindy might have been beautiful if she stopped smoking. And stopped throwing her chest to men she would never have a chance with. Cindy opened her mouth, but then he recognized Elizabeth swooping into view, half of her hair tied up and the other half falling down like string against her neck.  


“Hi Arvin,” she crooned, “I’m glad to see you again.”

“So he must be that boy you were tellin’ me about.” Cindy said, turning back to Arvin. Her disgust was wiped clean.

“Mhmm,” Elizabeth said, “ol’ Arvin Russell.”

“How do you know my last name?” He was shocked but not really surprised. Almost everyone was related in Knockemstiff, and if they weren’t related, they were family friends. And if they weren’t family friends, they were enemies.

“You don’t remember me, do ya?” Elizabeth said as she smiled. She and Cindy both leaned over the counter in unison, like a pair of hyenas closing in as they licked their lips. Elizabeth was the only one skinny enough to pass as hyena, Arvin thought. Cindy could be a hippo, maybe.

“We went to high school together for about a year. I was a senior when you was a freshman,” Elizabeth licked her red stained lips, “I dropped out in about October, but I always thought you was cute.”

“No, I don’t remember you, sorry.” Arvin tried to look in the small window between the two girls’ heads, trying to see if he could get a glimpse of Lucy’s curly hair anywhere.

“That’s alright, darlin’,” Elizabeth hooked one of her fingers under his chin. Her sharp fingernail stabbed into his soft flesh when she redirected his line of sight to her and Cindy’s crooked smiles. “I’m 22 and Cindy here’s only a year older, 23. What do you think about that, Arvin?”

“I think I came here for something to eat.”

“We know,” Cindy said and leaned in even closer, “that’s what we’re offering you, cutie.”

Elizabeth’s nail still stabbed at his skin. Menthol and the smell of perfumed dried rose swirled into the air and choked his throat more than it did his nose. Cindy and Elizabeth still stared at him wordlessly, shifting their chests to entice him and running their tongues along their teeth. Arvin’s nose scrunched at the sight before him: the way Cindy’s face was damp and the dots of black mascara that collected under Elizabeth’s eyes. The two women still never lost their smiles and he thought they leaned closer to him every second.

“Where’s Lucy?”

A flash of pain came across Elizabeth and Cindy’s faces at the same time. Elizabeth dropped her finger from Arvin’s chin and quickly went back to her previous gaze with hooded eyes and a subtle smile.

“Honey, c’mon, what do you say?” Elizabeth purred at him.

Cindy placed her hand on Arvin’s forearm that was on the counter. The arm hairs of his that were standing up tickled him as she brushed feather light along his skin. She left a trail of sweat with every pass of her palm, just like a slug. “We both get off in about twenty. Could probably make it ten if we sweet-talked Jack enough.”

“And who’s gonna make up for you cutting your shift early and do all of your work?”

“That colored girl you always talk about,” Elizabeth said quickly, “we can make you forget whatever weird hang up you have about her, baby.”

“Her name is Lucy.”

“Her name doesn’t matter.” Cindy said.

“Yes, it does.” Arvin glared at both of them back and forth, his hot hazel eyes trying to burn a hole between each of their eyes. “It matters a whole lot more than either of yours do.”

For the first time, he saw raw anger on their faces. It sank in deep, the lines on their foreheads deepening the harder they frowned. They both backed away from him the slightest bit, but still stayed close.

“Arvin,” Elizabeth started with a sweet tone opposite to her harsh face, “you’re not even giving us a chance, honey.”

Cindy still kept her damp hand on Arvin’s arm.

“Just tell Lucy I was here and asked for her,” he said curtly. He jerked his arm away and stood up from the counter. He turned to walk away, but suddenly jerked to a stop. He turned around and fished for a nickel or two out of his pocket. He flipped them on the counter and they just narrowly avoided falling off. Cindy and Elizabeth stood frozen, Cindy’s face shocked and her fat chin grew red in embarrassment. Elizabeth almost shook with rage where she stood, her thin bottom lip sticking out so far she looked like a fish. “These are for you two.”

––––

Lucy wiped down the silver appliances in the back room, so cheap that some of them bowed in when she scrubbed at a stain for too long. She didn’t pay attention to how many of the other waitresses were still working. She bet zero, or maybe only one. Jack was laughing awful loudly out front for him to be alone. Who or how many didn’t matter, she thought and breathed out a breath and stood up straight, rolling her aching neck. She would be the only one who wouldn’t be allowed to leave until the dirty kitchen looked at least surface level clean. If she actually cared about the place and the customers that ate there, she supposed she’d clean for a purpose other than getting home as quick as she could.

She was bent over scrubbing at the very bottom of the industrial freezer when she heard the swinging door creak open and slowly flap shut. Lucy didn’t turn around until the hardened ketchup stain was gone. When she did, Cindy and Elizabeth, or Candy and Lizzy as everyone but her called them, stood still at the doorway with their arms folded right under their chests.

Lucy let the rag swing from her weak grip on it. Their stares had a sear coming from them, so hot that the spit in her mouth burnt up. She waited for them to speak first.

“So, _Lucy_ ,” Elizabeth said and came closer only one step at a time with Cindy trailing her, “what the hell are you doing with a white boy?”

“A cute one at that,” Cindy tacked on.

Lucy gripped the rag until her knuckles started to ache. She felt cool still. But the girls came closer and Lucy wouldn’t do anything to defend herself physically. She blinked and held her eyes shut for a second. The taller girls were so close they were cornering her when she opened her eyes again.  
“I don’t know Arvin,” Lucy said lowly.

“Yeah? But you somehow know his name and he knows yours.” Elizabeth snapped back.

“And he’s asked for you both times he’s been here.” Cindy said.

“Maybe he’s just more comfortable to be served by coloreds.”

“Oh?” Elizabeth countered, stepping so close to Lucy that her breath tickled Lucy’s neck. She pressed her back flat against the freezer, arms spread out and straight. “And he’s just more comfortable with coloreds in his car then, right?”

“Wha–”

“She saw you get into his car, nigger,” Cindy said with such a snarl that spit flew from her tongue and landed onto Lucy’s lip. Lucy flinched with a jerk of her head and the fridge pinged behind her. “You think you’re good enough to whore for white boys now?”

Lucy gripped the rag so hard her wrist began to shake. Maybe if she hit them and ran, she thought, she could make a break for it. Maybe some other place in town would hire a colored girl without asking around.

“Listen, I could ask if Arvin would talk to you guys, or–”

“So now you think that we need your help?” Elizabeth sneered. “And unclench that fist, bitch. You hit either of us and you’ll spend so long rotting in jail that you’ll be so dried up no man will want you.”

“Please just let me finish cleaning,” Lucy said with no waver to her voice. “I have no idea why Arvin asks about me, or– or wants to see me after work. I have nothing to do with it.”

“Playing innocent, yet you got in his car.” Cindy said.

“Why don’t you just whore around with your own kind, huh? Even those fat ass truckers here don’t even spare you a glance. Don’t you know you’re not worth dog shit on the bottom of our shoes? Why would you play around with Arvin?” Elizabeth said quickly after.

Lucy darted from looking into both of their narrowed eyes. She settled on Cindy a little longer after Elizabeth’s words. The image of Cindy’s body hunched over on all fours in the cab of a semi truck flashed in her mind. Her tits knocking together and her hot breath fogging up the cracked open window of the cab and the greasy, hairy, grotesque man behind her, howling with his head tipped back. The eye contact Lucy and Cindy shared then was the same as it was now, locked into each other with a secret pact between them that neither completely understood, but knew was never to be spoken of again.

“I don’t do anything with him.” Lucy said and looked at Elizabeth directly, “I’ll avoid him like no tomorrow if you just let me finish fucking cleaning.”

Elizabeth scoffed with widened eyes. Her neck gathered rolls as she cocked her head back to look at Cindy, who looked back at Elizabeth with an equal amount of disgust.

“Oh,” Cindy said with a laugh under breath, “we’ll make sure you don’t do anything with him.”

Lucy didn’t realize she screwed her eyes shut until she felt a bony fist crash onto her cheekbone. They still were closed when doughy hands jabbed into her ribs and then pushed her down. Lucy felt her head crack against the concrete floor that was littered with crumbs. After that, the continued blows felt dull and far away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in regards to the fatphobic language: it doesn't reflect my own feelings. i just didn't want to present arvin as this dreamboat perfect man. because if you've read the book, u know perfectly well he is not. (no shame if u haven't, just a heads up. but u should definitely read the book. i love it so fucking much)
> 
> and also. that little flashback scene of cindy and the trucker. that was vulgar. omg. sorry went a little buckwild there


	6. Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please check out the endnotes

“Get over here, the comb’s hot.”

Lucy set down her needle and thread that was attached to her sister’s dingy yellow church dress. Her eye socket throbbed as she shuffled to her momma and the tiny metal chair she had sat on to get her hair done ever since she could walk. Probably even before then. Her momma’s sharp oval nail dug into her scalp as she shifted most of Lucy’s poofy hair to one side. The comb sizzled when it touched her hair but the burn of the metal against her skin didn’t make her flinch anymore. The cracked mirror on the pillar in front of her revealed the blackberry colored bruise under her left eye. When she splashed dirty puddle water on her face on her walk home, the bruise didn’t look so bad. The comb passed through another section of her hair again with a hiss and Lucy felt the gravel stab into her knees again like earlier. She remembered how wild her eyes looked then and how she felt a tremble running underneath her skin. And now met her own dead gaze; momma always said her black eyes were a pit.

“What happened to yo eye?”

Lucy blinked her dry eyes and cleared her throat, “slipped in the kitchen. Hit it on the edge of the sink.”

The comb sizzled through her hair again, at the back of her head this time. “You alright?” Her momma asked.

“Yeah, momma. ‘m fine.”

“Did those girls help you out at all?”

“Yeah,” Lucy swallowed. Her eyes looked pitch black in the reflection of the mirror. “They gave me some frozen peas to put on it for a little while.”

“Good,” her momma put the long and cool end of the comb in her mouth and tried to talk over it, “tol’ you straightnin’ your ‘air would help wit alladat. People tend to like wha’ looks like dem.”

Lucy breathed through her nose and closed her eyes. She didn’t want to look into her own eyes anymore and not at the dirty, homely kitchen surrounding her. Momma let down the middle part of her hair and the hot comb slid through her hair again like butter.

“Got news for ya, honey.”

Lucy kept her eyes closed. Her butt was starting to go numb from the way the metal of the chair dug into her skin. “What’s that?”

“That Tillerson boy who went to school with yo brother, ‘member him?”

“Mmm, no ma’am. I don’t.”

“He’s tall ‘nd dark, would play pickup with your brother after school. His name’s Kenneth.”

Lucy opened her eyes. She blinked slowly and watched, through the mirror, as her momma slid that comb through her hair. The way her chubby fingers flicked as she spun the comb around this way and that, like the comb hadn’t rested over the flame of their stove. She remembered Kenny. He was classically handsome. And he was already 23, just like her brother Malcolm. Momma had been trying to push him on her for a year now and now that she was eighteen and freshly graduated, Lucy supposed momma didn’t expect her to work at the diner forever. Probably wanted grandchildren by now. Lucy closed her eyes again and tried to picture herself with a baby on her hip, but she saw nothing. Only the reds of her eyelids colored her mind.

Momma slapped the back of Lucy’s neck with her free hand. Lucy opened her eyes then. “You gon answer me, girl?”

“Yes, momma. I remember him now.”

Momma’s arm went out of the mirror’s frame when she put the comb back over the stove’s gas flame. For a while she combed her fingers through the straightened part of Lucy’s hair, never touching her naturally curly, frizzy hairs. Lucy saw the smile in her momma’s eyes.

“He came up to me earlier today, when I was helpin’ his momma with the church bake party that’s on Sunday and when you was at work. He asked 'bout you. Said he’d love to see you.”

“He can see me Sunday.”

“Girl, you know that’s not what I mean.”

Momma picked up the comb and started on the last section of her hair. Lucy wondered what Ken meant.

“I want you to sit by him at church on Sunday.”

“Okay, momma.”

They didn’t speak while the comb sizzled through the rest of Lucy’s hair. Each pass of the comb left Lucy’s hair lifeless against her head. She closed her eyes to avoid the sight. The bruise started to throb again. Lucy thought of her little sister Mary, asleep in her bed, with her curly hair tickling her nose as she slept. Lucy didn’t know if she should give up her job so she wouldn’t have to assimilate to those white girls anymore. She tried and tried to picture herself with a man like Kenneth, strong and steady, but she couldn’t do it. She hated the diner. Hated giving up her identity. But hated selling her soul away to a man just as much. 

“All finished.” Lucy heard the click of the stove dial. She kept her eyes closed. Her nose burned. “Get up and wrap yo hair before bed.”

Lucy stood up and kept her eyes closed. The chair scraped against the floor as momma dragged it to its place in the corner.

“Goodnight baby,” momma yawned and Lucy opened her eyes. She watched mama’s back as she walked away, sweat staining the back of her purple nightgown. “Don’t let yo daddy catch you up when he gets home.”

“Okay. Night, momma.”

Lucy found herself staring into the mirror when the bedroom door clicked shut. She didn’t touch her hair. Instead, she walked to the table where she left Mary’s dress. The fabric scratched at her fingers. Tears grew heavy at the bottom of her eyelids the more she ran her fingers along the fabric. She didn’t jump when the needle pricked her skin and drew blood. Red dotted Mary’s dress now. Lucy remembered when she used to wear it. When her hair flowed and bounced like her sister’s. 

She stepped away from the dress and out onto the porch, careful to not make too much noise. The cicadas screamed above and junebugs crashed into her bare legs. The hot breeze howled through the holes of the screen door and lifted her hair from her shoulders. The tears cooled her as they slid down her cheeks, but only two came out. She was barefoot, but stepped down her bowed porch steps anyway and made her way to the edge of the road. She looked to the right, out where the church was, where the basketball court with apple baskets for nets was, and imagined the world beyond. Where the gravel road ended and blacktop began. She wondered how other colored girls lived.

Then, she looked to the left. The direction where the diner was and where downtown lay. She saw the clearing of trees where Arvin had dropped her off. It looked like a pair of headlights was staring back at her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> do not worry, i plan to update this story as often as i can. i just had my birthday last weekend and had midterms this week and next (literally procrastinating studying for one by writing this). i usually will post on twt anything about updates, just an fyi.
> 
> secondly, as i post this part, the movie is now out on Netflix (finally!) and i loved it! but.  
> i will be following the book as a reference for this fic. the movie was very true to the book except for certain things. i personally believe the movie made arvin's actions more sympathetic than the book did and, frankly, more sympathetic than his actions actually were. so. just so we're clear, arvin isnt going to be an uwu baby in this fic on purpose because i want to explore the darker side of his character (after all, you don't kill 4 people without having the capacity to do so). this a/n is already too long so if you really want to discuss it, i have a [twitter](https://twitter.com/nsfcypher) for that.
> 
> and finally thank you for all the hits and kudos. when i started this there was only one other fic in the tdatt tag and i genuinely only expected two people to read the whole thing. so thank you so much!


	7. Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unbeta'd. fair warning, i have a hunch that there are probably so many typos. i am so tired while posting this

That Tuesday, the door opened with a slam and the bell on top of the frame chimed wildly. Lucy took a deep breath as she scrubbed at the counter, cleaning up the mess of dried milkshake Jack left her to clean up while he left with three of her coworkers on his arm. Payday was coming on Friday and Lucy couldn’t protest if their after-work orgy resulted in her pay being docked so he could reward the girls with a fatter check.

The bones of her neck creaked as she slowly turned to the door’s entrance, prepared to tell whoever that they were closed, only for them to tell her to serve them anyway, which she had no choice in the matter.

Her plastered smile quickly dropped when she saw Arvin standing at the curve of the counter. His chest puffed up and down quickly. His white shirt and jeans were covered in black streaks and the streaks peaked out from under his shirt collar, licking at his neck. His hands were shoved in his pockets and looked almost timid standing there with a hat that almost covered his eyes.

“Arvin,” Lucy said sternly. The bruise under her eye was mostly faded, now yellow and purple still lingered there. And that same spot started throbbing when Lucy remembered that Arvin being here was the reason why she got her ass kicked in the first place. “We’re closed. What the hell are you doing here?”

“I, uh,” he said and took a seat at the counter, right in front of Lucy, “wanted to see you. Just you.”

“Just me?”

“Yea,” he smiled. He took his hat off and ran a dirty hand through his hair. He set his hat down on the spot she just wiped clean. “Your coworkers annoy the piss outta me.”

Lucy couldn’t help but agree. “Well, I already told you to go to them if you want to feed your ego, so I don’t see the point of you being here.” She tossed the wet dishrag to the counter and the sound of its smack bounced against the walls.

Lucy gripped the edge of the counter with both of her hands, her arms spread out wide. She tried to keep a neutral expression, but then Arvin folded his arms under his chest and put them on the counter, leaning in closer to her. Only one light was left on in the entire place, and it was behind her. The shitty jukebox Jack wheeled in one day was still plugged in and lit up. And the neon lights from the box, its electric red and eye-straining yellow paired with greens and blues, lit up around Arvin’s head, fanning out like beams behind him. Arvin parted his lips like he was going to say something, but he let them stay open instead. His eyes focused on Lucy’s lips, and then scanned her down to her chest, then he looked straight into her eyes again as if nothing happened. Lucy supposed that nothing really _did_ happen, but she still pressed her thighs together. They both were so still and she puffed out a breath. Arvin looked down at her lips again. His stare never left when he asked her, “you wanna get out of here or what?”

“I’ve got a job to do, Arvin.”

“Mmm,” he hummed, “scrubbing off stains all night?”

“No,” Lucy leaned in closer so that he would look her in the eye. It worked after a few seconds. “Only until its cleaned.”

Arvin rubbed his chin and tilted his head up, so that his eyes looked hooded when he looked down at her. A grin slowly made its way to his lips. “I can see my reflection in it. The counter’s clean.”

Lucy scoffed at him. She felt her face get hot even though it didn’t show on her cheeks. Her own reflection stared back at her as she looked down at the counter, unsure of why she wasn’t angry with him when she was the reason why her eye had looked terrible and why her ribs bruised for days.

“Hey,” Arvin said softly. He tapped the bottom of Lucy’s chin and let his fingers linger there. She didn’t move her head, only moved her eyes to look at him. At this close, Arvin saw the indentions of her pores, but he could only focus on her brown eyes that, until now, he had never noticed the beautiful streaks of honey brown in her irises; the light brown cracked through the deep brown as if it came straight out of her large, dark pupils. Arvin couldn’t bring himself to say anything while he admired a beauty he had never seen before. Her eyes alone deserved his full attention.

He swallowed and looked at the space between her eyes so he could focus on his words. “I’m sorry for how things ended the last time we hung out. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, promise.”

Lucy smiled, “I know you didn’t, but you’ve got to realize things are different for girls.”

“You’re right. I apologize, Lucy.”

Lucy leaned into the light touch of Arvin’s fingers underneath her chin. “How’re you gonna make it up to me?”

“I thought we could ride around in my car, I’d pick us up a bottle or two, and that’s it. Promise.”

“A bottle?” Lucy whispered.

Arvin smiled. “Yeah. Of whiskey.”

Lucy scrunched her nose. “I’ve never drank before.”

“Well, you can start. If you’d like.”

––––

The glass bottle pinged from Lucy’s tapping fingernails as she waited under the low buzz of the blue fluorescent light. She didn’t think she was nervous, but her leg still bounced up and down while she traced Arvin’s barely visible silhouette through the poster covered windows of the liquor store. Earlier, he had stopped at a convenience store near downtown to get Lucy a pop, even though she told him she was alright.

“You might need a chaser, babe,” Arvin had winked and clicked his tongue when he climbed out of the car and headed into the convenience store.

Lucy’s leg had started bouncing then the second he left just as it did now. She took a drink of her coke. The more she realized that her eyes were unconsciously darting between the direction of oncoming traffic and the store inside, she realized she was looking out for any white person that saw her. Although the night had been dark ever since Arvin showed up at the diner, she thought about what would happen if a white person found her in a nice car on their side of town. She remembered how bad her black eye had hurt. Her leg bounced a little faster.

Arvin came into the car and slammed the door too hard accidentally and Lucy jumped so high her ponytail almost hit the ceiling.

“Sorry, sorry,” he rushed out, “didn’t mean to scare ya.”  
“You’re alright,” Lucy said. She stopped tapping her nails against her bottle.

Arvin put the bottle in between his legs and peeled out of the gravel parking lot. Lucy almost breathed easier when he went the direction opposite of downtown.

“I got a bottle of white horse. Where to?”

“Don’t care,” Lucy said, “same place as last time maybe?”

Arvin hummed, “actually, how ‘bout we pull up behind the church I go to. There’s a few lights in the back I can turn on,” Arvin glanced at Lucy sideways with a smile as he shifted gears, “I actually want to be able to see ya this time.”

“Okay,” Lucy said and that was that. Arvin drove swiftly to where his church was and Lucy bumped and bounced over the rough road. When they arrived the white church looked like a shed with a wooden cross slapped on the front. The lights Arvin referred to were already on and the church was backlit with them on. Arvin turned into the grass to head to the back of the church. Lucy followed the crumbling headstones with her eyes as they passed. The yellow light made the headstones look darker and taller in the contrast between the light and the shadows at their backsides. Arvin stopped the car.

Lucy blinked, she didn’t realize she had zoned out. Arvin shifted in his seat so that his back was against the driver’s side door. He reached in his backseat for something and as he fumbled around, Lucy visually traced the veins in his forearms that snaked up to his bicep. The muscles in his forearm and bicep bulged and popped when he moved around the few items in the backseat; his lines of muscle definition deepened with every movement. Lucy noticed then how he would slightly roll the end of his cigarette between his teeth. She wondered when he had put it in his mouth. Arvin finally grabbed the lighter and began to hunch over it to light up his cigarette, looking directly at Lucy all the while. The church lights fanned out behind him in a circle. Strands of his brown hair fell down at his temples and led Lucy straight to the green eyes that never moved from hers. Arvin’s smile was tenderly wicked.

His cigarette lit and he flicked the lighter cap shut. Lucy watched as his cheeks hollowed when he inhaled and she realized he would probably be content to sit and stare at her all night.

“I didn’t know you went to church.” She said.

When she said it, Arvin turned his head to look out the windshield with a smile. He took the cigarette out of his mouth and let the smoke spill out. “You didn’t know or didn’t think I went?”

“Didn’t think you did,” Lucy replied, She leaned back in her seat, unconsciously leaning toward Arvin, and she looked out the windshield as he did. “But I suppose everyone here goes to church.”

“Would break my grandma’s heart if I didn’t go to church.”

“She wouldn’t be mad?”

“No. She’d be more upset than anything. She’s got the kindest soul, so I do right by her.”

“That’s sweet of you, Arvin.” Lucy turned to look at Arvin with a smile. His head was down and she soon heard the rustling of the paper bag he had gotten from the liquor store.

Arvin looked at her after she spoke and felt his hands curl around the neck of the whisky bottle. “I call it basic decency.” He pulled the bottle out by the neck and let the bag rest in his lap.

“Do your folks go with you?”

The seal around the bottle cap broke with a crack. “My folks are dead.”

“Oh, shit. Arvin, I’m sorry.”

The smile he gave her was tender, but contrasted by the whiskey bottle he raised to his lips. “It’s okay, you didn’t know. It was a long time ago.”

“Who do you live with then?”

Arvin let his cigarette hang from the corner of his mouth as he took a quick sip of whiskey. He didn’t grimace and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “My grandma. Her name’s Emma. And my uncle Earskell and my sister Lenora.”

Lucy suddenly felt her face lift, “Oh! Lenora Laferty, right?”

Arvin hummed, “that’s her.”

“I’ve seen her around the diner once or twice. She’s always very sweet. And pretty.”

Arvin’s eyes widened. “That’s the first time anyone’s ever said she’s pretty.”

“Well, that’s backwards. She’s very pretty.”

Arvin huffed out a laugh and shook his head. “You’re a real sweet girl, Lucy.”

“I think I just have eyes.”

Arvin smiled at her again. He rolled the window down and, again, Lucy admired the way his bicep peeked out of the end of his shirt sleeve as he cranked the handle. Arvin ashed his cigarette and left the door open, the sound of screeching bullfrogs and crickets seeping into the car.

“I already know the answer, but I’ll ask anyway,” Arvin said as he looked at Lucy, feeling his heart grow at the way she leaned into the car seat, finally relaxed as she looked at him with a smile. She didn’t have a death grip on her coke bottle anymore. “You go to church?”

“Since you know already, what’s the answer?” Lucy raised her eyebrows at him and Arvin laughed.

“The answer’s yes.”

Arvin let out a loud laugh when Lucy crossed her arms at his response and let a playful frown come across her face. “And why are you so sure?”

“‘Cause, like I said, you’re a good girl, Lucy.”

“You said I was a sweet girl.”

“Same thing.”

Lucy only huffed, but she smiled at Arvin, too. She drank some of her coke, Arvin drank some of the whiskey. They stared at each other, both smiling. The light still shined at Arvin’s back, wrapping around his head. She felt the streaks of light warm her arms and legs. Arvin occasionally stole glances down at her bare legs, the places where the skirt of her uniform still managed to slide up her thigh, despite how close it always clung to her body. Arvin tore his gaze away from Lucy and started to unscrew the cap of the whiskey bottle.

“You want a drink?” He asked, holding the bottle up.

“Does it taste good?”

“Not really. But I think you’ll like it.”

She didn’t say anything for a while, looking at Arvin, then at the bottle, then at Arvin again. He shrugged and gave her a goofy grin.

“Alright.” Lucy put the coke bottle between her legs and looked at Arvin, not moving to or away from him.

Arvin patted the empty space in between them on the front seat bench. “You’ll have to get a little closer, my apologies.”

Lucy gave him a shy smile and slid over to him. She turned to face him and laid one of her knees flat against the seat and hooked her ankle under her other thigh. Arvin’s bony knee pressed firmly against the bone of her shin. 

“Tip your head back,” Arvin whispered. She did so without hesitation. And when he told her to open her mouth and she did so instantly, he found himself gripping the glass bottle a little tighter.

Arvin leaned in close to her. He stuck his free hand in the little triangle gap she had created with her seating position. Lucy kept her mouth open, her tongue growing dry as she stuck it out and as she felt Arvin’s firm chest brush against her shoulder. He stole a glance down at her wide, waiting eyes. 

“Alright, here it comes,” His lips brushed against her temple.

Lucy screwed her eyes shut and held her breath. The brown liquor hit her tongue and slid down her throat. A few drops landed at the corner of her mouth. Arvin thought about leaning forward, just a few inches, and licking them off for her. Arvin tilted the bottle straight again. Lucy kept her head tipped back and eyes closed when she swallowed. The liquor rushed through her faster than anything she ever drank before. Quickly, she felt a warmth from her throat crawl down to her chest and to her fingertips. She opened her eyes and looked at Arvin, his hand still in the space between her legs.

“Good girl,” he whispered, “just like I said you were.”

––––

The leather felt cool on Lucy’s cheek. Gazing up and out at the stars through Arvin’s dirty windshield, she felt like the edges of her vision were spinning. If she closed her eyes, she felt like she was floating but still tethered to the leather seat underneath her.

Arvin looked down at her. His fingers stroked along her hair and the bow she still had tied in her hair. His fingers grazed the curve of her ear as he gently tucked her hair behind it. As she lay there, eyes closed and the top of her head resting against his thigh, he heard her softly hum. Arvin debated if the two more swigs he gave her were too much. But she seemed happy and she finished her coke a while ago, so he figured she was alright. He inhaled his fourth cigarette of the night and traced his flat nails along her ear.

“You’re still wearing your uniform,” he said.

Lucy giggled, the first time he had ever heard her do that, and smiled with shut eyes. “What else would I be wearing?”

“Dunno, just haven’t seen you in anything else is all.”

“Yeah, well I don’t think that’ll ever change,” she said, rubbing her cheek against the leather, trying to get more comfortable.

“What do ya mean by that?”

Lucy huffed and her eyes shot open. She laid on her back, eyes looking at the car’s ceiling, and then she angled her head back to look at Arvin. He moved his hand from her ear and let it rest on her throat, gently. 

“Mean that,” she said with just a hint of a slur, “‘m always workin’. Never take this damn thing off.”

“That’s a shame, sweetheart.”

“I know. Hell, Arvin, only eighteen ‘nd already all I live for is work.”

Arvin only hummed in response. He was starting to become addicted to the feel of her voice as her throat vibrated under his fingertips. Slowly, Arvin traced vertically along the column of her throat, praying that she would never stop talking.

“You know,” Arvin said, “I could always buy you a new dress. For you to wear whenever you get off work.”

Lucy furrowed her brows and turned over on her stomach to look at him. Arvin let his hand reluctantly slide off of her neck, but the sight of the back of her skirt showing more of her legs than he had ever seen before made up for it.

“You wanna buy me a dress?” She asked, propping herself up on her forearms, hands resting on Arvin’s thigh.

“Sure,” Arvin shrugged, “what color you want?”

She still looked at him like a skeptic. “You don’ know me that well.”

“I’ve known you for weeks now. We ate and drank together,” Arvin reached out and tucked her hair behind her other ear, itching to touch her again, “what else is there to do?”

“I guess,” she slowly let a smile take over her features. The touch of his hand on her ear felt like it came through a blanket, but she loved it still.

Lucy sighed and rolled her neck from side to side. Arvin stretched his arm along the length of the front seat.

“What time is it?” Lucy asked.

“I don’t know,” Arvin ashed his cigarette and rolled up the car window after. “I don’t have my watch on me. You need to head home?”

“Probably,” she sighed and pulled herself to sit upright, but she stayed in the middle, pressed against Arvin.

Arvin let his arm fall from the back of the seat onto her shoulder. “Will your folks be okay with you comin’ home so late.” Arvin figured if she needed, he could sneak her in through his bedroom window and let her crash with him.

“Yeah,” she smiled and looked at him. His arm unintentionally pulled her closer to him. The smile he looked down at her with made her body feel hotter than the whiskey did. “Tol’ you. As long as I make it to work, ‘s okay.”

“Alright,” Arvin sighed. He pulled his arm away to turn on the ignition and shift into gear. Lucy shivered. She gazed at his shoulder, feeling and watching it jerk as he shifted and turned the wheel. She let her head rest back against the seat instead.

“But before we get to yours,” he said, pulling out onto the gravel road in front of the church, “you gotta tell me something.”

“Sure thing.”

He gave her a quick side glace and Lucy saw his tongue poke against his cheek. “What happened to your eye?”

Lucy stiffened up. The world was still rippling like water before her, but she was sure she heard him right.

“My eye?”

“Yea,” He made another left turn, “the bruising under it. What happened.”

Lucy raised her fingers and brushed against the skin. It wasn’t tender anymore, and the purpling blended so well with her skin, not even Elizabeth or Cindy commented on it anymore.

“How—How did you…?”

“It looks like a fist mark,” Arvin looked at her quickly as he made a sharp right. “Someone hit you?”

Lucy opened her mouth and shut it a few times. It was hard to lie to someone who already knew the truth. She saw the spot where Arvin dropped her off coming closer quickly.

“No, uhm, uh, I just,” her words were still drowning in whiskey as she fished for them, “no. just hit my head on the floor. At work. In the back.”

Arvin didn’t say anything. He slowly pulled into the clearing of trees where he had dropped her off the first time. Lucy grabbed the coke bottle when they stopped. She felt urgency crawling up her dead limbs, worried about Arvin getting mad at her lies. She had had such a nice time.

“Lucy.”

She stopped and looked at him. She felt like she was moving at the speed of light, but she realized she was still pressed against him. Now that the car was stopped, he wrapped his arms around her shoulders again, but this time his grip jerked her closer into his chest. He looked at her, a dead stare that shook her even in the dead of night surrounding them.

“If someone ever hurts you again, at all, you tell me. Right away.” He jerked her closer into his chest. “Got it? I’ll beat the shit outta ‘em.”

“But, Arvin,” Lucy couldn’t bear to hold the gaze he was giving her. “They were girls.”

His gaze didn’t soften for a moment, but his eyes traveled around her face. She felt his eyes burn into the streak of purple that was under her eye. “I’d figure something out.”

“Okay,” she whispered. Arvin’s grip didn’t loosen from her shoulder. He grazed his thumb on the light bruise. The whiskey still made her head swim. And Arvin’s parted lips breathed the heat of the whiskey he drank into her own mouth.

Arvin removed his thumb and looked at her lips.

“Okay.” he breathed. Lucy felt his grip loosen, but his hand never moved from his shoulder.

Lucy sat up straight and his hand moved from her shoulder, to her back, then it fell away from her body as she scooted away to the passenger door.

“You need me to walk you to the door?”

“No,” she turned and gave him a rushed smile, “I’ll be okay.”

“Okay. Bye, Luce.”

“Bye, Arvin.”

Lucy felt the headlights shining against her back all the way until she finally stumbled in through her front door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a big ol' 3.8k update (my largest yet) hope it was enjoyable  
> [twt](https://twitter.com/nsfcypher)


	8. Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unbeta'd. yall kno what it iz.

Arvin leaned against the front porch rail. Parts of the splintered wood dug into his hip. He didn’t light a smoke or have a drink. The cool summer air wrapped around him and relaxed him enough.

The bones in his hands and feet ached. Work on the blacktop wasn’t the hardest he’d ever done, but it was tedious. Arvin rolled his shoulders and his neck. He closed his eyes but the relief wasn’t bone deep, the feel of the burning sun still crawled over his forearms and his cheeks. He breathed in and out, crickets and other bugs steadily growing louder among the trees just beyond the house. He opened his eyes with his head still hung low. A spider was slowly spinning a web near one of the beams on the porch.

Arvin turned around. Uncle Earskell’s rocking chair was still swaying forward and backward. The blanket thrown over the armrest. Earskell wasn’t out on the porch when Arvin got home. But that was nearly 20 minutes ago, if he had to guess. Earskell would be out soon enough.

Arvin saw the shadowy figure slowly come into the light from the house. It was Emma, her frail hands and shuffling walk unmistakeable. She opened the screen door and it hissed. 

“Arvin honey,” she said, closing the door behind her and wiping her hands on her apron, “when did you get home?”

“Maybe five minutes ago. Just wanted to hang out for a bit, grandma.”

“Oh,” Emma looked surprised, but she still smiled at her grandson, “well we ate supper a bit ago. You want me to heat it up for you?”

Arvin looked over at his car and the makeshift dirt path to their house. He didn’t like when they ate supper without him.

“No, grandma,” he looked back at her, “I’ll be alright. You rest.”

Emma scoffed. “Honey, I think you’re the one who needs rest. You work so hard all the time out there.” She moved closer to him, her thin, boney hands rubbing between his shoulder blades. He couldn’t remember the last time they were this close. Arvin looked at her short grey hair and the liver spots sprinkled all over her neck and sparingly on her face. Even though he called her grandma, it was the first time he realized she was old. He wouldn’t have her all his life. 

“I’m okay, grandma,” Arvin put his gentle hand on her shoulder, rubbing across her boney shoulder with his thumb. “every man’s gotta work eventually.”

“Arvin, you’ll never be a man to me,” Emma cupped his face and kissed his cheek. “Always be my little grandson.”

“I’m taller than you by at least half a foot, what do you mean _little_?” He joked.

Emma hit him on the shoulder and he couldn’t help but laugh. Then, he pulled her in for a hug, wanting to capture the rare moment. The scratchy grey hairs on top of her head scratched the bottom of his chin. He pressed his cheek against them and inhaled. The smell of hot oil and pepper radiated off of her. He wondered what she had cooked. Maybe Earskell was still inside eating.

“Arvin,” Emma said, cheek pressed flush against his chest, “have you seen your sister at all today?”

The confusion Arvin felt ruined his peace. He moved his head to look at his grandma’s face. She looked up at him, just as confused as he was.

“No. You’re sayin’ she ain’t here?”

“No, she left for the graveyard around 5 and hasn’t come back since.”

“It’s almost dark. The graveyard ain’t that damn interesting.” Arvin pulled away from his grandma. He felt his eyebrows pinch. Arvin remembered the last time she was gone too long, when he saw her praying on her knees while three boys nearly suffocated her with a dirty paper bag. His hands started to itch, his mind running a mile a minute through scenarios, each one worse than the last. 

He pulled his keys from his back pocket and headed off the porch so fast that he skipped the three front steps altogether. Although he didn’t see it, Emma shivered from how fast he tore himself away from her and looked at her grandson with startled eyes.

Arvin felt his temperature slowly rise out of fear and anger. “I swear to God if one of those sonsabitches even touched her—”

“Arvin, honey—”

Arvin yanked his car door open so fiercely that the door recoiled like a shotgun and hit his side. “I told ‘em I’d kill ‘em if they ever touched her ag—”

“Arvin?” Arvin turned around at the sound of his name. Lenora stood there, with a flushed face and dirt on her knees, clutching her Bible to her chest. “Where you goin’?”

Arvin slammed the door shut, but instantly felt regretful when he saw the way Lenora flinched. He approached her swiftly but made sure to place his hands on her shoulders with a soft touch. “Lenora, where the hell were you?”

She looked up at Emma, then back at Arvin, her mouth opening and shutting out of shock from the terrible gaze Arvin looked at her with. “I was at momma’s grave. Grandma knew that.”

“You was there for three hours?”

“Well, uh, the Lord just spoke to me extra long today.”

Arvin took his hands from her shoulders. He stood straight with his hands on his hips. Lenora looked nervous, if the way she brought her Bible closer into her chest was anything to go by. She wasn’t looking him in the eye, her pinched face darting from Emma on the porch to ground underneath her. Arvin couldn’t bring himself to feel too much pity. Not when she acted like there weren’t people out there who wouldn’t beat the shit out of her.

“Horseshit. The Lord wouldn’t keep you out ‘til dark.”

Lenora suddenly whipped her head up to look at him. The apples of her cheeks steadily grew blotchy red along with her neck. She tucked her thin lips until they were invisible. Arvin looked her straight in her eyes, matching her slowly rising fury.

“Arvin Russell, don’t you speak like that when you mention the name of the Lord!”

“Why don’t you just tell me what the fuck you were doing out so late then? Ain’t no graveyard that interesting, I don’t care who’s buried there.”

Neither of them noticed, but Emma shook where she stood on the porch as she watched them fight. Arvin looked so big, looming over Lenora like that. She had never seen them argue before.

“Arvin don’t you curse at _me_ neither!” Lenora shouted back at him. She felt a puddle of tears collecting at the bottom of her eyelids. She hated the way she shook when she was mad. Her nails dug into her Bible so deep that she thought her nails were going to snap in two.

“Arvin,” Emma spoke so softly that they both ignored her. “Don’t curse at your sister like tha—”

“Don’t you know that there’s three boys out there, or who knows how many else, wantin’ to beat the piss outta you? And maybe even worse?”

“Arvin, I see my momma every day no matter what. Don’t act like anythin’s changed!”

“You won’t be seein’ her ‘til dark anymore, I’ll tell you that much.”

Lenora threw her arms down from her chest, but still held her Bible with a vice grip. Arvin saw the tendons in her neck strain against her skin and her shoulders shake with every breath. Her beady eyes bulged so big Arvin thought they would pop right out her skull.

Lenora spun on her heel, shaking her head as she walked to the porch. “you ain’t my daddy Arvin and you can’t tell me what to do!” She shouted back to Arvin.

“Yea, well I’m the only one who risks his neck to save your ass so I _will_ tell you what to do!” Arvin shouted at Lenora for the first time. The way the veins in his neck scattered along his skin like lightning made Emma bring her fingers to her lips, covering her mouth. 

Lenora said nothing to Arvin nor Emma as she flung the screen door open and purposely slammed it shut behind her.

Emma released a shaky breath out and looked to Arvin. He didn’t watch Lenora as she left, instead he pressed his forehead to his arms that were folded against the top of his car. Arvin heaved in and out. He shook his head, annoyed at Lenora but more so angry now at himself for getting so explosively angry at his little sister so quickly. He flexed his fingers, trying to lose the shaky feeling trapped in his knuckles.

“Arvin,” Emma said, soft again but this time Arvin couldn’t ignore her. “You need to go apologize to her.”

“I know, grandma.” Arvin said shortly. He took a few more deep breaths. His heart still felt like it was slamming against his ribcage, thrashing to break free.

“I know,” he repeated, “I know, I know.”

Arvin let out another sigh that was purely hot air. He turned away from the car. Wringing his hands, Arvin headed up the porch with a bowed head, repeating _“I know, I know,”_ the entire way.

The screen door closed again when Arvin left and Emma was relieved when it didn’t slam shut. Her blood felt cold, shocking her through her bones.

Emma stood on the porch and she swore even the crickets went silent. The sound of Arvin's heavy work boots slowly faded into the old house. The breaths she could get out were too shallow. Her bones felt like sandbags trapped within her skin. She didn't think about what she saw and heard for a long time. Instead, her eyes mindlessly traced the outline of the tall trees around the house, reaching so high she was sure the leaves grazed the hands of the Lord. She thought about touching the Lord; she thought about his mercy falling on her family. It seemed the Lord's enduring mercy surrounded all of Coal Creek expect for the house she raised her son in. Then she bowed her head, showing humility but not shame for her thoughts.

The screen door opened. Emma smelt Earskell before he saw him.

“Heard all that yellin’ mid porkchop, then I saw Lenora tearin’ through here like a bobcat was at her heels. What happened?”

“They got into an argument.” Emma looked past Earskell when she spoke.

“Really? Lenora and Arvin?”

“Yes.”

Earskell only hummed a response. He made his way to his rocking chair and sat down with a grunt. He didn’t look at his sister, either. The wood creaked under each movement of Earskell’s chair. Emma looked down and tried to swallow whatever had crawled in her throat. Maybe it was lamentation.

“Earskell, you were right.” She whispered, still looking down at her knobby ankles that poked out against her nylons.

“About what?” Earskell said.

Emma swallowed. “About Arvin. What he did to that Dinwoodie boy.” Emma looked up at her brother, who looked right back into her sad, tired blue eyes. “He really put that boy in the hospital, didn’t he?” she whispered.

“What made you realize?”

Emma swallowed again but the knot still stayed in the middle of her throat. “He got so angry, so quick. Like a match. And at Lenora, of all people.”

Earskell reached for his pack of cigarettes and lighter in his front shirt pocket. He said nothing and kept a neutral expression. Emma noticed how long it took him to finally get the flame to stay.

“Willard ruined him, Earskell. He ruined that boy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is miniscule but lenora was repeatedly described as ugly in the book so if you get that vibe from my description of her, it's on purpose. the actress who plays her in the movie certainly is not  
> [twt](https://twitter.com/nsfcypher)


	9. Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: sexual assault, brief mention of rape
> 
> don't read this shit if ur under 18.
> 
> (unbeta'd)

The faint buzz of electric guitar coming from the jukebox sounded throughout the diner. Lucy made quick work of scraping the black remnants of burnt cheese from the flat griddle. Initially, she thought the sweat spotting along her hairline was from how hot the griddle still was, but when she turned her head to grab a rag, she caught the way Jack was looking at her out of the corner of her eye. More accurately, the way he looked at her ass as she bent over. 

Lucy heard her other two coworkers on staff cackle before she watched them bounce out of the kitchen. Besides Cindy and Elizabeth, the only other two waitresses on staff were Colleen and Connie who were so similar that Lucy was sure one never fucked Jack without the other present. They weren’t related, at least Lucy hoped, but the only way she could tell the two apart was that Connie always had something in her mouth, whether it be a cigarette or cock. 

They came out of the kitchen arm in arm, not casting a glance at Lucy, which she was thankful for. A purple lipstick ring stained Connie’s freshly lit cigarette and her uniform shifted in all directions, just barely hanging from her skinny body. Colleen swiped under her sunken eyes with her ring finger. She was what Lucy thought a ghost would look like in the face; large, dark eyes set so deep within Colleen’s skull that they resembled peach pits and a high, thin nose that looked like it might break if she sneezed too hard.

Both of them fixed their gazes on Jack. Lucy saw the way their eyes narrowed just before they slipped out of her peripheral vision. Their blocked heeled shoes they wore thunked against the tiled floor. Lucy scrapped at the residue even harder, sweat starting to settle and cool in the line along her back.

Lucy could only hear the ends of whispers, words like _“baby”_ and _“need you”_ spoken with a hush. Lucy started to see the familiar image in her mind of both Connie and Colleen hanging off of each of Jack’s shoulders, their shriveled lips trailing a line from his chin and jaw in tandem. And their stubby nails that probably were ghosting along his arms and dipping underneath his shirt collar, twirling their fingertips in his chest hair.

Lucy started to scrub so hard at the residue that her shoulders flashed with a sharp, popping pain.

Giggles sounded briefly along with a rough grunt. Lucy could track the movements of Connie and Colleen as the thumps of their heels grew more distant. Then the chime of the bell attached to the front door sounded, and then Lucy only heard the sounds of her scraping and the _thwip, thiwp, thwip, thwip_ of the cash Jack was counting. The way he counted nearly every night. Lucy looked down at the griddle and realized it was probably clean enough that she would be able to go home.

She drummed her fingertips on the chrome griddle. Even the fact that she left her usual pink hair ribbon on the bathroom sink that morning made her nervous. Lucy turned around to Jack’s small eyes shooting through her over the top of the bills, his eyebrows set in stone while only his hands moved. His grey eyes had no life, didn’t move even with the slightest jerk as he fixated on her face. Lucy could only focus on the way his bottom lip rippled as she assumed Jack was chewing at the skin inside of his lip. 

“I, uh,” Lucy stopped to clear her throat, “I’m all finished. Cleaning.”

Jack only grunted. His eyes left her when he leaned to the side, looking at the cleaned griddle behind her, and then his slimy, grey fire was fixed back on her. The bills were still in his hands.

“Your hands look pretty dirty, Lucinda.”

Lucy looked down at her hands that were gripping the edge of the griddle. Only to the knuckle did black stain her hands.

“You should probably wash ‘em.”

“No,” the thick spit caught in her throat fought on its way down when she swallowed. She kept looking at her hands like they were anything special to inspect. “No, thanks. I just cleaned the sink, so, uh, don’t really want to get it dirty. Again.”

“You tryna run out of here, huh?”

Lucy looked up at Jack and his money was lying flat on the counter, fanned out. Lucy could hear the creaking of his bones as he flexed his fingers in their clasped position. Each hair on his knuckle, the sparse hairs wisping around his head, and his shiny nose and cheeks made her feel like the blood her body was trying to evaporate. She wished Colleen and Connie hadn’t left.

“No, I just don’t wanna get the sink all dirty. Right after I cleaned it.” She smiled at Jack. He grinned back at her like she was meeting his eyes, but Lucy couldn’t stare at anything but the yellow sweat stains ringed underneath his armpits.

“Aw, honey, it don’ matter. You know I don’t mind things a lil’ dirty ‘round here.”

Lucy smiled at him and gave a fake laugh. Jack still sat there at the counter, and his doughy hands were still clasped together.

“”Specially not my girls.”

Lucy felt her body flash hot. He had left her alone for so long, so long, she was sure it was over. He fucked a different coworker every other night and what would he want with a colored girl, Colleen _and_ Connie were waiting for him and would be his as soon he let her go home, why was he–

“Come ‘ere, Luce.” Jack finally moved and patted the cushioned stool next to him. Lucy didn’t realize she had kept her gaze on him all this time. “Sit next to me.”

She couldn’t stomach the idea of being that physically close to him ever again. Instead, she said nothing as she came up to counter across from him and away from her safety net that was the large, chrome griddle. She stood in front of him with an unknowingly soft, and innocent look on her face that made him want to pounce on her then and there, her objections and those other two whores outside be damned.

“I suppose that’s good enough,” Jack rolled off in a low voice.

Lucy fought the urge to look down at the counter. She kept her chin level, staring at him as steadily as he looked back at her.

“Lucy,” he drawled out. He paused for a moment and scanned his eyes up and down her top half. Jack reached his black and festering hand to her slowly. His short nailbeds barely registered on her skin underneath her top as he glided his manacle touch all over her chest, stopping just short at the curve of her chest. Lucy felt her chest rattle as she breathed in and she knew he felt it too when he looked up into her eyes. A grin wiped across his face with no finesse. The tobacco smell wafting from his crooked teeth curled around her. Lucy hoped that the smell was what was making her start to tear up.

Jack fumbled with her top button, it slipped from between the fat pads of his fingers.

“Why don’t you ever play with me, doll? You know all this money would be yours.” He jerked his head to the money he let lay on the counter, but his eyes stayed on Lucy’s chest.

He got the first button undone and ran his finger along the very beginning of her cleavage. Lucy thought for a second that she could feel the indentations of his fingerprint.

Jack flicked his gaze up from her soft chest to her even sweeter face. The flustered gaze on his face and rising heat from her that bled into his fingertip where he touched her made his blood race for her. He thought of taking her by the hips, feeling the pulsing of her luscious, sweet flesh in his dirty hands. He wanted to taste Lucy, the forbidden fruit, more than he had ever wanted any of her whorish coworkers combined.

He moved his fingers down to her second button.

“N-no thank you, Mr. Dunlap. I don’t do that kind of stuff. Your regular checks are enough for me.” Lucy couldn’t look at him anymore, she put her head down.

“Don’t it make you feel good that a man like me wants you? Would risk his reputation just for a _taste?_ ”

Lucy hated that she thought of Arvin when he said that.

She wanted to respond but her breath weighed heavy in her chest. She felt as if she were heaving.

Jack undid her second button.

She looked at him and he was already looking back, one of the corners of his open mouth already curling into a half-smile, and his nearly red tongue curling around his jagged, yellow teeth.

“Luce,” he said again, “you know I’ve been after you since the day you walked in here. The only reason you got this job. Don’t you wanna thank me?”

Lucy could see Colleen and Connie through the windows. Their heads thrown back as they cackled, it looked like they were kicking something next to Jack’s beat-up truck.

“I am thankful, I swear, but, I–” Lucy swallowed, and looked away from her coworkers outside to Jack in front of her. His finger went from lightly ghosting her chest to digging in deeper and deeper. “I, just, you have the other girls. To keep you company. And they, they enjoy it.”

Lucy wasn’t stupid. Anything with two eyes and just a peanut rattling in their head would recognize that no young girl would willing fuck the fat pig in front of her that vaguely resembled a man.

“Mmm,” Jack hummed, finger dipping back into Lucy’s cleavage, “but I want you.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Lucy didn’t miss the smug look on Jack’s face after she called him sir, “I...I don’t know what to say.”

He said nothing, just hummed. He ran his thumb along her collar and then ran his fingers just below her collarbone. Lucy kept her breaths shallow. She didn’t want her skin to press into his any more than it already was. Her toes curled within her shoes, scraping against her soles for any tactile thing to keep her grounded. Every muscle in her arm twitched, tense from the sear horror that made her heart beat so fiercely she could almost see it slam against her skin.

There was a pounding on the door, _thud, thud, thud_ , and Lucy startled so bad both of her feet came off of the ground as she gasped. Both she and Jack looked and saw Connie pounded against the glass door with the heel of her palm. An adolescent-like pout rested at the bottom of her long face, her lips shriveled like the wisps of her hair escaping her ponytail.

Jack finally removed his hand from Lucy’s chest, but she still held her breath for as long as possible.

“I’m only letting you go because I want to. And I have two other options out there,” Jack pushed himself up from the counter. He leaned in over the counter, his potbelly squishing and straining against his shirt where he pressed it against the counter. He leaned in so close to Lucy that she could almost count every one of the dark pores on the tip of his nose. She never noticed he was so much taller than her.

“Hope you know that I’ll be thinkin’ of you the entire time I’m fucking around with those two ragdolls.”

Lucy didn’t say anything. She finally released her breath. She grew lightheaded as soon as she let it out.

Jack collected the money with one swipe of his hand. Lucy stayed against the counter as she watched him shuffle his heavy feet to the door.

He put his fat hand against the door before he paused, looked over his shoulder, and said, 

“Tell that boy who always comes to pick you up to stay out of the other girls’ sight. It pisses ‘em off when they see you run off with him.” he stopped to spit on the tile that Lucy had just mopped clean. “And when they get pissy they’ll slip in some teeth when they blow me. Then _I_ get pissy.”

He walked out and the bell rang three times while Lucy watched him heave himself into his truck before Colleen and Connie jumped in after him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> originally wanted to make this chapter longer, but i wanted to post so no one thought i was abandoning this work. school is just kicking my ass rn!!!!!
> 
> thank you for 1100 hits.... that's so incredible to me,,, thank u everyone so much and ur comments encourage me more than u'll ever know ...luv u
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/nsfcypher)


	10. Ten

Lucy felt her breath come out in puffs that punched out of her throat. She didn’t control them.

She reflexively reached up to pull at the abnormally absent pink ribbon in her hair. Her fingers twitched when she remembered that the ribbon wasn’t there. Again. She pulled her crinkly, poofy hair that sat at the crown of her head. The rest of her hair was down, more and more pieces sticking to her the more she sweat.

She turned off the lights in the diner as usual. A slow reluctance crawled over her. Even though her chest still felt scarred from where Jack touched her, she was scared to leave for a more normal world.

Lucy let her fingertips graze the smooth lightswitch cover. She looked over her shoulder one last time, looked at the grill she scraped spotlessly, and the counter that shined clean. The nub of the lightswitch felt heavy in her fingertips when she flicked it off.

The hot air hit her like a vacuum, taking away all the chills from her body at once. She took off her nametag immediately as always and let it thud at the bottom of her apron’s pocket. She gripped the strap of her satchel tighter than she needed. Nothing was inside, but she clung to it dearly. A blue Bel-Air was parked cockeyed in white dirt and gravel. The wind blew again, and it carried the white dirt up and it swirled around the car. Lucy was relieved, but not shocked, to see Arvin through his dirt-caked windshield through a window where the spinning dirt parted. He was hunched over, lighting a cigarette.

Lucy dragged her feet to Arvin’s car. The car handle burnt her hand where she touched it. She didn’t jerk it away, only flung the door open faster.

“Hey, Luce.” Lucy lifted her head for a moment when she heard Arvin’s rough voice. She couldn’t shake the way he looked so young, but only in his face. His face was smooth when he smiled at her, precious brown curls just wisping at the ends of his hair. Yet, his hands, where one was gripped on the wheel and the other flat on his thigh, were twisted from labor. His knuckles making his hands look knotted with lines carved deeply against each knot. His body looked as sturdy as it had felt, from what she remembered over her past drunken haze. She didn’t want to feel the embrace of a man, but rather one of a friend.

Lucy didn’t answer him. The door creaked as it shut. Lucy removed the strap of her bag from her shoulder. She took a second to breathe, letting air rush out through her mouth consciously.

“You okay?” Arvin spoke again. The car was still turned off and he didn’t move much.

“Yea, yea,” Lucy finally responded. She opened her empty satchel and rummaged around mindlessly. “I’m okay. It’s fine.”

“You talkin’ to me or yourself?” Arvin mumbled over the cigarette between his teeth.

“You the only other person here, ain’t you?” Lucy snapped back. Her hands sat stiffly in her lap. The brief heat of rage that suddenly overtook her burned hotter for just a moment as Arvin’s look of concern slowly morphed into one of amusement, the burning cigarette lifting at the end of his smile.

“I love when you get mad, Luce,” Arvin said smugly as he finally turned the car on and began to shift into drive. “I finally get to hear that southern drawl.”

Lucy only hummed in response. She turned to look out of her window. The diner and its chipping white paint slowly rolled behind the Bel Air. Lucy placed a hand against her chest, just above the spot that burned, and scratched herself lightly with her long nails. Arvin pulled out slowly and Jack’s truck appeared before she could process. Lucy saw Connie’s back, with all the knobs of her spine pushing against the thin, pale skin of her back and the stringy hair that smacked against it as her body bounced up and down. And slowly, Jack’s meaty hands crawled up the blemished expanse of Connie’s back, pulling and digging into it. Lucy felt her body jerk as Arvin stopped before he pulled out onto the main road. Jack’s flat eyes were encased in his heavy eyelids. He stared at Lucy when he yanked Connie’s hair. Lucy could almost hear her screech as her head was tipped back so far that she could see every rivet of her throat. Jack did not smile as he stared at Lucy. His body was the only thing unmoved in the cabin of his truck.

Arvin pulled out onto the main road with a screech. Lucy suddenly felt her skin throb from underneath her fingernails that dug into her skin. She kept them there.

Wind whipped into the car as Arvin rolled down his window. The sky looked a hazy blue. Too light for rain, too dark to be settling.

“How was work, Luce?”

Lucy blinked her eyes once, twice. The irritation never went away. She cleared her throat and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. She turned and Arvin was already looking at her, smiling as he glanced at her and the road.

“Uh, it was fine. Just fine.”

Arvin hummed this time, pausing as he sucked in another breath of nicotine.

“No one gave you any trouble?” Arvin asked, as he always did.

“No, no,” Lucy instinctively lied. She kept scratching at her chest. She looked at Arvin for a moment. He looked at her from the corner of his eye. Quiet was the only thing around them and she felt a need to be honest with him. “Jack was just, you know, being weird.”

“Weird?” Arvin asked.

“Yeah,” Lucy cleared her throat and scratched at her chest a little harder. The red marks would last for hours, “just more forward today. But Connie and Colleen were there. So, ‘s fine.” Lucy looked down at her shoes. She rubbed the slight swell of the heels together.

Arvin looked at her longer than he should have. He barely registered how short his cigarette was getting. He took one long look at her, feeling his forehead wrinkle the closer his brows came together in puzzlement. 

“You sure?”

“Yeah, Arv,” she swallowed. Lucy still looked down at her pretty white shoes, with her hand flat against her chest. Arvin thought it was odd that her buttons were undone.

He looked back at the road, swerving a little to miss a squirrel. He let go of his cigarette out of the window, let it whip away and tumble in the wind.

“Alright. But you tell me if anyone makes you comfortable. Especially him.”

“Yeah, okay,” Lucy softly said.

She finally looked up. Arvin was focused back on the road, the lines of his muscular forearms moving and deepening as he flexed and relaxed his fingers against his steering wheel. Lucy looked around. They were at a stop sign somewhere, few cars either moving or stalled around them. Whether Arvin was taking her home by a long router or somewhere else entirely, Lucy found she couldn’t find it within herself to care much either way.

“You want somethin’ to eat?” Arvin shifted again, the Bel Air slowly rocking on top of the rough gravel rough they were on.

“No, no. I’m fine. Thank you.”  
“You sure? It’s been a long while since we’ve eaten together.”

Lucy scoffed but still smiled. She looked at Arvin again and he met her gaze with a smile of his own. “Yeah,” she said, “I guess it has.”

“Whaddya say then, Luce? Still don’t want anything?”

Lucy realized her smile had never faded, but she still clutched her chest as if she were holding onto something, “yes, I’m sure.”

Arvin sighed teasingly. He still didn’t drive any faster. They glided with the sun, the orange rays dulled to silver and purple streaks as it mixed with the dark, dull sky. Lucy slowly felt herself sink against the soft velvet of the seat. The longer they drove, the more she grew aware of the distance between them on the seat bench. She remembered the last time she sat in the middle, when the flames of whiskey kissed her tongue and the heat of her body molded into Arvin’s.

Arvin still drove silently, his fingernails scratching against his torn-up denim jeans.

“Arv?” Lucy said softly. She planted her hands against the seat beneath her before she lost the courage. She slid over to Arvin, the soft seat tickling the backs of her thighs. Before he could turn to look at her, the tattered material of her skirt grazed against his jeans and eventually lead to where he could feel the soft skin of her knee press into him even through his denim’s thick material. She was plastered against him from the waist down and he never wanted her to leave.

“Thank you,” she sighed, “for picking me up today. And every day before that. It really means a lot.”

Arvin looked at her, the hint of a flush on her dark skin, the curls that stuck to her temples. He slung his arm around her and pulled her body into his so they would mold together at every inch.

“I tell you this every time, darlin’,” he pulled her in even closer to nuzzle his cheek against the top of her head, “it’s no problem. I enjoy it.”

Lucy let her body finally slack for the first time in hours. She put her hand to Arvin’s chest and let her fingernails lightly scratch against him. She tried to let the anxiety bleed from her body with every beat of his heart.

“I wish you would let me repay you, though,” She grumbled.

And when he laughed, Lucy could almost cry at the relief she felt to be surrounded by joy.  
Arvin could picture the scowl on her face, the one where her full lips squished together and the apples of her cheeks lifted and almost looked like they filled.

“Well, maybe this time you can.” He said.

Lucy rubbed her head against Arvin’s chest, burrowing herself closer to the beating of his heart.

“Anything you need, Arv.”

“‘Member how you told me you saw my sister once at the diner?”

“Yeah,” Lucy mumbled. “Why?”

“You ‘member how she got there?”

Lucy pulled away from her warm spot against Arvin. She kept her hand on his chest and his arm around her. 

“Uh, it was a car. Why?”

Arvin kept his focus on the road in front of him, “what did it look like? Can you remember?”

“Well,” Lucy started to think. The way she fixed her gaze upward, as if she were trying to physically search her brain to remember, would make Arvin internally coo at her anytime but now. “It was a blue car. I don’t know the model, sorry, I don’t know car makes and models.”

“Was it flashy?”

“Yeah, I would say that. Had little gold accents and a white top.”

Lucy felt Arvin’s hand squeeze her shoulder slightly. She saw his jaw ripple as he swallowed. He looked out ahead of them, barely moving his pupils as he turned.

“Was she with anyone?”

“Uhm,” Lucy started, “I didn’t really see him, but there was a man in the driver’s seat of the car she pulled up in. He didn’t come in though.”

“Did you see what he looked like?”

“Well, I could tell he had brown hair. Couldn’t really see much else other than the fact that he looked kind of skinny. She didn’t mention him when she came in.”

“Mm,” Arvin said. He let his fingers rub against Lucy’s shoulder. His harsh grip was gone as quick as it had appeared.

“Everything okay?” Lucy asked.

“Yeah, yeah,” Arvin cleared his throat. He shifted in his seat and looked down at Lucy again, but a newfound hard gaze was set into his face. “Everything’s fine.”

Lucy could only stare at him. The skepticism in her heart was heavy, but she decided to bury it in favor of the peace Arvin had brought her. She plopped her head back down onto his chest, making him both laugh and heave. She squeezed his middle as tight as she squeezed her eyes.

“Mkay. But don’t be lying to me.”

Arvin’s chest made her head bounce as he laughed.

“Would never lie to you, Luce.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> schoolwork and depression are the results of a long absence. I'm just trying my best to stay alive folks
> 
> [my twitter](https://twitter.com/nsfcypher)


	11. Eleven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unbeta'd  
> very sorry guys, i really wanted to hit over 3k words with chapter but the ending just felt like the right place to me, I'm sorry

The breeze from Momma’s fan barely tickled Lucy’s hot skin. A small piece of thread was starting to fray at the seam of her pink glove. She ran it along Mary’s soft thigh, just below where the tulle of her yellow dress peeked out. Mary’s dark skin was dotted with sweat, just barely highlighting the pores and soft leg hair that was just beginning to sprout. Reverend Davis’s voice grew louder and louder, but then would drop down softly. Lucy heard Momma and other’s hums of praise, shouts of amens and saw their light palms raise up to the Lord. Lucy kept looking at her baby sister and could only really feel the way Mary’s big, curly hair tickled her cheek with a tender curiosity. Despite the sweat all over their bodies, they both stuck together. 

Lucy focused sparingly on the word of the Reverend. No matter what he said, she always felt a stone of shame in her belly that grew heavier and heavier. It would spread to her arms and legs and weighed her down. She decided long ago that God was too hard to appease and she gave up on the fantasy of being a saved girl long ago. Instead, she looked down at the smooth face of Mary and decided maybe she would imagine God with a child’s face. Maybe she would love Him then.

The heat in the rotting church only climbed higher and higher. The spaces between the wooden plank flooring let heat rush in like a geyser. The heat came in and stayed. Every face was sweaty, with a smoothness from pious bliss but with pinched eyebrows as not even God would amend the country heat. As they stood up, Lucy made sure to scoop Mary up and hold her against her chest. Reverend Davis only shouted now and the congregation shouted right back. They reached their arms up and out to him, fingers spread and twisted. Lucy would quickly raise one arm whenever she felt Momma’s gaze, but she would always bring it right back to Mary and her sweet yellow dress, running her gloved finger along scratchy fabric even if she wished she could truly feel the fabric against her bare hand.

As the Reverend shouted with the interjections of the choir and congregation, Lucy couldn’t help but feel a different heat coming from across the aisle. She tried to sneak glances at him from the corner of her eye, but she knew he was there. Lucy shifted Mary’s growing weight often as she held her little sister. Kenneth was there, only a diagonal pew and a few people away from her. She knew Ken cared about God and the church. She felt narcissistic when she questioned if he was spending more time looking at her than at the crosses in front of them. She decided to fully look at him instead of starving herself of full glances and when she looked at him with a slight turn of her head, she saw Ken, fully looking back into her eyes, with his palms turned up to God. His face didn’t move as they stared, nor his lips, and a blue brilliance shot to the surface of his skin.

The Reverend shouted an Amen and she jumped, although he had never stopped talking.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


The heat only ghosted around Lucy as the congregation stood outside. Momma was talking to her group of friends she really only saw on Sundays and Lucy had to reluctantly let Mary go to play with her friends. Lucy kept her gloves on her embarrassingly sweaty hands, but she clutched onto Mary’s small white ones. She still tried to pick at the skin around her nailbeds that were covered with fabric. The girls her age by now had all found their loves and if they weren’t walking with them under the tall black oaks, the couples were all gathered around, laughing together. Some Sundays, the girls would branch off for what Lucy overheard as “girl time.” And every Sunday, she felt her heart and nose burn as she watched on and longed to be with them again. When she would watch Mary play in the dirt with her hands, the fat on her legs dimpling as she squatted and crouched with her friends and squealed at the sight of bugs, Lucy would see Mary’s face slowly morph into her own and the faces of Mary’s friends slowly became the faces of her friends. Friends who Lucy used to make her love going to church, but now made her feel nothing as they started to grow up without her. She caught herself staring at the girls, but knew they weren’t paying attention, so she stared. 

Cecelia, with bumped ends, who once told Lucy about her dreams to either have a husband and three kids by 25 or become a movie star and how she wouldn’t settle for anything less. Judy, who made Lucy laugh so hard she cried for the very first time, and Gloria, the stunning beauty who everyone wanted, but had told Lucy she had a face that would make any man want her. Lucy felt the heavy tears pool in her eyelids and they never fell, they never did. She wanted to be like them again. But she couldn’t find a man’s touch that she could stomach. A man that they could accept.

They all laughed as they walked away, together. Lucy felt her face buzz with a numbness that only came from the cruel detachment from friendship.

Lucy looked down at her pink gloves again. Service had ended nearly an hour ago, yet the socialization was in full swing. She heard the familiar drag of Momma’s patent leather shoes from behind her.

“Honey,” she said with a quick tongue. Lucy turned and she saw Ken’s mother next to her, smiling brightly. She was always a beautiful woman, but she never cared as much about appearances as Momma did. Momma always pointed out whenever she thought Mrs. Tillerson’s clothes were raggedy before she turned to hug Mrs. Tillerson with a beaming smile every Sunday.

“Me ‘n Mary are gonna stay here a while longer, don’t you need to be heading home? You work later, right?” Momma continued.

“Yea,” Lucy said with a voice bogged down in tears, “but you don’t want me to walk with y’all?”

Momma waved her hands exaggeratedly before looking back at Mrs.Tillerson with a curled smile, “No, no, we’ll be fine, baby. You should go on home.”

Lucy looked away from Momma for only a moment when she heard heavy thuds slowly approaching. She saw Ken come into her vision as she slowly looked up his legs, stiffened by ironed black slacks and a front pleat that drew her up to his eyes like a steady current. His broad face was drenched in brilliance; a flat nose the spread out and led to high cheekbones and full lips that she could only feel envy for. Ken looked at her one time and smiled, his two front teeth just barely crossed at their ends.

“Miz James,” he said deeply. Momma jumped around toward him. The tears in Lucy’s eyes only had just started to dry and she watched the elegant line of Ken’s jaw that was covered with dark stubble. Momma looked surprised for a second, but soon she melted under his gaze quicker than the omnipresent sun. “Sure nice to see you,” Ken continued as he shook Momm’s delicate hand.

“Oh! Honey, hi how’re you? Oh, you look just so wonderful, still so handsome,” Momma beamed.

“You saw me just last week, ma’am.” He laughed. 

The way Momma and Ken smiled at each other, Lucy felt like she was intruding a bit. 

Momma laughed, “Oh I know, but you chil’ren just never stop looking prettier an’ prettier.”

“Well, thank you, ma’am.”

Ken shifted and turned to Lucy. She traced the way his long fingers jerked inside of the pockets of his slacks. 

“Sorry for listenin’ in on y’all, but I coul’n help but hear that you have to head home?” He asked her.

Momma immediately beamed. Mrs. Tillerson, who had been silent the entire time, looked just as hopeful as Momma when they met each other’s gaze.

“Yes! She does,” Momma interjected. She looked at Lucy with big eyes, “but she’ll hafta go alone. Me and Mary are staying back for a bit.”

The tears in Lucy’s eyes were still barely surfacing. A few blinks and they would disappear, but she didn’t want them to leave. She just looked ahead at Ken and ignored the incendiary stare coming from Momma.

“Yes ma’am, I heard. So I wanted to ask Lucy if it’s okay if I come along?” Even though he spoke like she wasn’t there, Ken stared into Lucy’s eyes the whole time, with his fidgeting fingers now hidden behind his back.

“That’s such a sweet idea! Don’ you think so Ida?” Momma questioned Mrs. Tillerson, but she had already turned back to Ken before she could see his mother just barely nod, “you’re such a sweetheart, Kenneth.”

Ken laughed politely. Lucy watched him for just a second, she could tell he was wringing his hands even though they were hidden from her. Momma had her hand on Ken’s bicep, looking like she was itching to say something because Lucy wouldn’t. That’s when Lucy turned suddenly and heard Momma tell him, “she’d love to!” and she heard Ken’s feet drag as he was pushed and short, “Make sure she gets home safe now!”

Lucy’s white shoes met the edge of the gravel road before she knew it. The high-pitched laugher from the children felt far away even though it wasn’t. She was glad she was getting some time away from Momma for a bit, but still was blanketed by her presence when she heard Ken’s heavy feet hurry next to her.

“You wanna switch places?”

Lucy looked at him like he was nothing short of crazy. 

“You’re right next to the road. People drive crazy here,” Ken said.

“No, I’m okay, thanks,” Lucy said.

They walked, Ken’s feet scraping along the grass below him. He was silent as she was loud, the rocks of the gravel road crunching shortly under her feet.

“Ken or Kenneth?” Lucy asked him as she looked up to the sky.”

“Huh?”

“What do you like best, Ken or Kenneth.”

“My friends call me Key,” Lucy turned to look at him. She wasn’t frowning but her lips felt heavy when she looked at him. He smiled, but his full lips would never disappear no matter how tightly he smiled, “but I guess Ken’s just fine.”

The old basketball court slowly became visible in the distance. Lucy focused in on it. Maybe if she pictured Ken as the little boy she always remembered him as, the walk would be pleasant. The boy with eyes as dark as hers who she couldn’t fathom being her brother’s age. 

“How’s the diner been treatin you?” He asked.

Ken with the lisp that her brother Malcolm always teased him for. Lucy remembered making fun of him for it years ago when he asked Momma for some of the ‘cookieth’ she made. And later seeing Ken fixated with his jagged front teeth in the shined up bumper of the Reverend’s car. She never mentioned it and Ken started talking less and less.

“Fine, just fine.” Lucy said.

Ken barely laughed, “you like workin’ with white folks, huh?”

“No, Ken. I don’t.”

Lucy barely saw him when he was a teenager, when he was eighteen like she was now. Maybe Mrs. Tillerson kept him locked away, Lucy didn’t know and didn’t speculate. She barely remembered him at that age. Only a blink’s worth of years younger than he was now. She only remembered the sparse cookie duster mustache he would make a show of dabbing clean of sweat at service, or the brief flashes of bicep she would see when he came over to take Malcolm to a pick-up game of ball. Then she remembered the apple baskets for hoops slowly rotting, yet Ken still coming over to take Malcolm anywhere, she guessed.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t think so.” When Lucy didn’t respond, he followed up with, “how’s Malcolm?

“Not sure. He only talks to Momma when he calls, so I suppose fine.”

“That’s nice to hear.”

The court was close now, the faded out-of-bounds chalk lines finally just coming into her view.

“You pay attention to service much?” Lucy asked him.

“‘Bout as much as you.”

“Really?” Lucy questioned. She was genuinely shocked when she looked at him again. He, too, was looking out ahead of him. But not at the apple baskets that would be beginning to pass them by soon.  
“You shocked?” This time he looked back at her.

“I just always remember you being more into service than I was.”

“Mmm,” Ken acknowledged, “it’s been a while since we spoke then.”

“I can’t remember us ever speakin’.”

Ken looked down for just a second, kicking at the grass as he did so. He smiled when he scoffed and Lucy was transfixed by his teeth once again, “well, I don’t think it’ll come as a shock to you that I want to fix that.”

“Does it bother you that I’m a last resort?”

“Lucy James, you’re anything but that.”

“So it’s coincidence that we’re the last two kids in our age group ‘round here that’re still single, huh.”

“You know folks couldn’t give a shit less ‘bout age, so long as you’re not cradle robbing.”

“And my momma’s guiding hand didn’t influence you at all?”

Ken laughed again, but the frustration slowly bled into the corners of his grin.

“I won’t lie, she opened my eyes, but, Lucy,” he stopped to look back at Lucy, “I wouldn’t be entertaining her, _this_ if I wasn’t interested.”

Lucy decided to look down at the road so she knew where she was stepping. She raised her head and slowly the basketball court was right next to them, yet slowly drifting away with each step they took. Ken still kept his heavy strides.

“Are you interested because you and I will always be connected to each other, no matter what?” Lucy asked.

“How you figure that?”

“No one’s left here for years. And even if you do, Malcolm would follow you to any place, so long as it’s not here. A piece of me’s always gonna follow you.”

“There’s nothing shameful about findin’ comfort in familiarity. That’s its only purpose.”

Lucy admired him for being both right and vulnerable. But wasn’t sure how much familiarity she could swallow until she suffocated. Or how much change until she puked. There had never been a threshold of challenge in her life until recent, but most of it never moved. She swore the trees didn’t even move with the wind nor the grass. The old stayed old and before anyone could notice, the young replaced them. In the ferris wheel of her life, she found she was stuck at the halfway point. She rested at neither extreme, the good nor the bad. She couldn’t figure out which was worse; the worst times of her life or the mediocrity that had choked her existence her entire life.

“That’s a nice point, Ken.” she said softly.

“So, uh,” Ken cleared his throat, “I know this ain’t been the best build-up, but, I’d like you to go out with me, Lucy.”

A car traveled near, but Lucy tried not to hear it. Lucy had never heard of anyone going out or going steady. One day a couple would hold hands, by the next week engaged and soon pregnant and sealed together for life. Lucy still didn’t want to give up her dream of a selfish life, one for herself with no obligations, in exchange for a life of survival. She figured she still had a few good years left.

“What if I say no?”

Ken laughed again, “well, I don’t know how I’ll stop tryin’ for you, Lucy.”

Lucy scoffed but still let a smile show on her face. She didn’t expect a different answer from a man.

“Well, you’re gonna have to wait a bit, Ken.”

“That’s fine, Lucy. Mighty fine.”

“I’m not thinking you mean that.”

“I do. I’ll wait for you, no problem.”

Lucy’s run-down brown house had just barely come into view. The backs of her heels were rubbed so raw from the backs of her shoes that they burned.

“What better option do you have?” She countered.

Ken’s lazy smile as he looked at her just barely fit into her peripheral vision. And the sky looked terribly blue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i really cant explain how sorry i am for this horrendous update schedule. i hope it doesn't sound like I'm throwing a pity party but depression is very real!! and she's got my ass in a chokehold!! so please don't think I'm abandoning this work, i continue to love it and all of you who leave lovely comments and kudos, thank you soooo much. if you want to hear more about that type of shit i usually talk about it on [my twitter](https://twitter.com/nsfcypher) (but do not follow if you're under 18. thx)
> 
> on a lighter note: throughout the process of writing this i was literally like "i miss arvin" .....wonder what i'll do 2 fix tht


	12. Twelve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another 3am, un-proofed update. yall know how it runs around here

“Grandma,”Arvin mumbled. 

Emma had her back to him and the loose skin on her arms shook as she scrubbed the plates clean. Arvin rubbed his dry hands together. Usually, he at least helped her dry off the chipped, old dishes, but when she insisted he stay put at the kitchen table, his aching feet didn’t have enough fight left in them to object.

Lenora sat next to him, chin tucked in as she moved her needle in and out of her white fabric stretched tight in an embroidery hoop. Arvin couldn’t see what she was creating, only the black thread that was pulled tight and loose and tight again was visible to him.

“Yes?” Emma responded without looking back at him.

Both the floor and the table creaked when Arvin shifted his weight. Lenora’s presence next to him felt overbearing, even if all she was doing was embroidering.

“Uh, I, uh wanted to ask you somethin’.”

Emma laughed something that sounded like it scratched her throat on the way out, “go ahead, honey, you sound nervous.”

“Well, uh, I was just wonderin’... just wanted to ask, uh, well— I don’t know how to say this, really—”

The dishes _tinged_ as Emma placed them together on the drying rack.

“I’m listening,” she said.

“Uhm, well, how would I…. uh—” 

“Just spit it out, Arvin,” Lenora spoke up next to him.

Emma laughed again and Arvin turned to look at Lenora with an agape mouth. She barely met his gaze, her small hazy eyes looked up at him for a flash before she lazily pierced through her fabric once again.

“All that time with that preacher and you still don’t have any manners, huh?” Arvin said.

“I was bein’ perfectly mannerly,” Lenora said, “but Lord knows you stutter more than a dotted line.”

Emma laughed again at their bickering, but Arvin withdrew anything he would have said when Emma spoke again, “just ask me, Arvin.”

“Well, grandma,” he eyed Lenora when he caught her staring at him when he tumbled over his tongue, “how would I ask someone out? A girl? Like, in a way she’d like?”

Lenora snickered next to him.

“Well, I coulda guessed it was a girl, Arvin,” Emma said.

Lenora fully laughed now but was cut short when she accidentally pricked herself with her needle. Arvin felt hot, and he just knew his ears were getting red the longer he lamented over what he just asked and how Lenora laughed. Embarrassment was about his second least favorite emotion and he was keen on eating his shoe if it meant he could escape it.

“Well, honey, what did you have in mind?” Emma continued. She still scrubbed at the few dishes left. Arvin hated hearing the way her fingernails scraped against the ceramic.

“I don’t know, really.”

“What does she like?”

Arvin opened his mouth, but fumbled a little. She had liked the whiskey she gave him. And the cheeseburgers. But she wouldn’t even tell her a color of a dress she would like.

“Uh, she likes, well, cheeseburgers.”

“Cheeseburgers?” Lenora squeaked.

“Cheeseburgers?” Emma questioned back. She set the last dish on the drying rack and when she turned to face him, her face could hardly lift underneath the deep lines of age that had already made a home on her skin.

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“What else does she like?”

Arvin thought some more. He knew _he_ loved the cute pink ribbon she would almost always wear with her uniform or the satchel she carried around no matter if she had something to carry or not. And _he_ loved being around her, the drives they would have and how as of late she ended up sitting closer and closer to him. And when even if they said little it never bothered her. He liked when they talked about religion and God, when she would mention her own little sister that she loved and a brother she forced herself to feel indifferent to. _He_ liked those things about her, how no interaction felt forced or pressured.

“Uh, I guess, me?”

Lenora giggled next to him and Arvin couldn’t help but feel shame all over again.

“You don’t know what she likes?” Emma asked him. The floor barely made a sound under her light frame as she sat on the wooden chair next to Arvin’s. Even though Lenora was partly still engrossed in her embroidery, he felt like their bodies were turned to him, cornering him and scaring him away from the idea of asking Lucy out.

“I-I just really know what I like about her, I guess,” Arvin said.

“Okay then, so what do you like about her?” Emma asked.

“Oh, c’mon Grandma, ‘m not gonna sit here and go on ‘bout stuff like that.”

“Stuff like what?” Emma asked.

“Romantic stuff, Grandma,” Lenora interjected. She was only a touch more tuned into Arvin’s dilemma, “he don’t wanna let you hear him get all mushy and the like.”

Arvin only rubbed the back of his neck. Lenora was right. He hated that his little sister seemed to be more tepid to the elements of dating than he was, but she was right. If he spoke about Lucy he wouldn’t be able to handle the onslaught of follow-up questions that awaited him.

“Well, what did you do for Mary Jane?” Emma asked.

“Shit, that girl wasn’t nothin’ serious.”

“Arvin, you shouldn’t be using girls like that,” Leonora piped up. She gave him a stern look as she exchanged her black thread for gold. Arvin thought it was funny how her Bible lay next to her on the table.

“She’s right, Arvin,” Emma said, “I understand wantin’ to have fun, but you better date with the Lord in mind.”

“How come you ain’t never gave Lenora a talk like this?”

“‘Cuz I don’t have to worry about her like that, you know it.”

Lenora’s face didn’t move, but Arvin still thought it wasn’t the kindest thing to say about a girl who had been called ugly all her life.

“Well, this girl’s different, Grandma. It’s not just convenient to be with her,” Arvin sighed.

“Hm,” Emma hummed, “well I guess that’s sweet.”

“That’s the closest Arvin Russell could ever come to romance,” Lenora quipped.

“Hush up and knit or whatever the hell,” Arvin shot back. He was only a little flustered, but his sister’s teasing smile somehow set him at ease again.

“You’re not giving me much, honey, so I don’t know what you want me to tell you,” Emma said.

Arvin twisted his lips in thought, “you’re a girl so I figured you’d know what girls like and, y’know, maybe you could point me in the right direction or somethin’.”

“Well, all girls is different, sweetheart. And it’s been a long time since anyone’s considered me a girl.” Emma scooted a bit closer to Arvin. She put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed. Arvin mostly felt the bones of her hands dig into his skin. 

“Yeah, I know.”

“Just do somethin’ simple and sweet. All it takes to impress a nice girl is thought and sincerity. You’ll do great.”

Arvin couldn’t help the way his heart grew heavy with appreciation at what his Grandma said. She had always been the sweetest woman, from when he was just a boy and meeting her for the first time to now when he was a man. She was the first woman he remembered growing to love.

“Thank you, Grandma,” Arvin smiled at her. Then, he placed his rough lips against her cheek.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


The sweat that was dotted on her hairline was lit aflame when she heard that engine rev. She had heard it over and over now, enough times that she heard it in her sleep. It would be loud, loud enough that she thought it was due to explode, before it was cut off. They always stopped with a jerk, but the engine still pinged, like a coin thrown down a well with an invisible bottom. 

Lucy heard the pings as she was walking away from her last table of the day—hopefully. The pings came from outside the building's facade and that made her skin not only burn hot, but also made the nerves in her arms feel like they were crashing into each other from the fear. 

Connie and Colleen were near the back, smooth-talking three lonely, foreign bikers underneath the right light above the pool table. Neither had ever mentioned Arvin—never staked their claim—but any pair who would prowl for men double their ages and thrice their weights might see a boy like ARvin as an unimaginable prize, if their self-esteem would give them the chance to imagine what he would taste like between both of their teeth.

Lucy passed her silver drink tray between her hands to wipe off her sweaty palms against her ketchup stained skirt. She didn’t need to turn around to know that the sound of a slamming car door was because of Arvin, didn’t need to turn around to see the blue Bel-Air parked out front for anyone, for everyone, to see.

She turned to get behind the front counter. She kept her head down to avoid Arvin’s haze that was surely fixed on her. She couldn’t feel it, though. The only thing felt was the flesh-tearing feeling of fear.

Cindy was the only person in Lucy’s view. Her chin was tucked into her fat breasts, cradling her own head. She was fixated on her red nail polish and the way the flakes fell as she chipped it, right onto Jack’s monthly billing that she was supposed to be doing for him.

Lucy silently moved in beside her. She fidgeted with the money in her hands, almost wanting the sharp edges to slice her fingertips so that her blood could flow and she could breathe evenly again. She looked up and Arvin was already waiting for her eyes. He smiled in a goofy way that she had never seen before. Yet, his eyes sparkled and he flailed his arm to wave, holistically detached from the hell he had suddenly thrust her into, in the little diner. Lucy burned. She burned and Arvin just waved, a puny spark from his cigarette was the only heat near him. Lucy lamented to say she hated him, the version of Arvin right before her, but she couldn’t get rid of the burn that came because of him. Last time, she got the piss beat out of her. He listened then and had only picked her up away from this building full of white people. He listened. Now, he waved at her as if she were not black and he were not white.

Lucy gave the paid tab and the bills to Cindy. No tip rested in her apron’s pocket.

“So he’s out front now, huh?” Cindy asked. Lucy looked at her mid handoff. Their fingers didn’t touch. Cindy, too, was looking at Arvin. He had stopped waving and was yelling at something out of their line of sight.

“I guess so.”

Cindy slapped the bills against the palm of her hand before she looked away from Arvin. Lucy watched her, too sick to look at Arvin.

“Doesn’t he have a clue how pissed people could get even seeing you two together?”

“Guess not.”

The chatter grew quieter, Lucy couldn’t decipher Colleen and Connie’s voices from each other anymore. The silverware didn’t clink as loud. Lucy fixated down at Cindy’s fingers, plump and red like her nails, as they counted out the money. She saw Cindy look up, her eyes hanging below her thick brow bone. Lucy couldn’t look out through that window before her. She focused on Lucy’s soft skin.

“Didn’t you tell him what could happen?”

“I did,” Lucy responded.

Cindy finally looked at Lucy, bills stilling in her hand. They stared at each other, the question of _’Did you tell him what already happened?’_ hanging thickly between them. Cindy’s brown eyes were icy, to a degree that made Lucy’s skin want to fall off if she weren’t already burning up from nausea knowing that Arvin was right outside. Cindy didn’t say anything, but she barely looked at Lucy, either. Lucy remembered those eyes, when she caught Cindy with that trucker so many months ago and when she saw her with Jack just a few nights earlier. She always caught Cindy in the act and no matter how silent she moved, Cindy always found her. Her dark eyes that were only a hint lighter than her own always sought her out. Sometimes, Lucy believed, they were looking for her. Looking for her to hang onto someone detached from her before she would turn her head and get back to her business.

Cindy looked away and turned her down for a second. She looked back at Lucy with a smile melted to her face, “Men just never care, do they?”

“No,” Lucy said, eyes fixed back to Cindy’s still red fingers, “I guess they never do.”

The chatter barely picked back up. 

“I’ll cover the tables you have to wipe up,” Cindy said.

Lucy gave her no time to reconsider. She was already untying her apron as her fingers shook, “Where’s Jack? And Lizzy?” she asked. Even though she shook with nerves, she felt the burning heat trapped inside of her molt into something uglier, a small ball of rage that burned her nervous as her fear once did. She crumpled up her apron as soon as it was off.

“Lizzy’s out in the back playin’ lot lizard. Jack must not be too far behind. If you sneak out the front now, I don’t think nobody will care,” Cindy said with laziness dripping in her voice and her body language. She didn’t even look at Lucy anymore.

Lucy scrambled to grab her satchel stuffed under the counter. She blindly fished for it. She was too busy peeking over the counter, keeping an eye on Colleen and Connie and their gang of bikers. They were all still engrossed in each other, their focus turned to whispering into each other’s ears and mouths. There was only one other couple seated, the couple Lucy just served, but she didn’t pay attention to them. If she did, she knew she would freeze up.

Lucy walked so fast she jumped more than she ran, trying to keep a cool head, but also to escape before anyone just happened to turn their head and see her leaving out the front door. But before she left, before her hot hand touched the glass door, Lucy looked back at Cindy. She realized she forgot to thank her. Cindy was looking up and Lucy barely caught the movement of her eyes as they found Lucy’s, like it was second nature at this point. Lucy wanted to mouth the words _’thank you’_ but she was tongue tied. Cindy stood there, hunched over the counter with a hand cradling her head. The eyes were still iced over as before, but the vulnerability lied within the abyss that were her pupils. Lucy only could picture her half-naked with her clothes twisted along her body, as she had seen her so many times. Lucy turned and opened the door without mouthing anything.

  
  
  
  


Lucy heard Arvin’s voice before she heard the soles of her shoes scrape against the gravel. 

“Hey! B—”

“Arvin Russell you get back in that car and don’t speak to me until that diner is below the horizon,” Lucy kept her head down and fumbled with her satchel, making herself look preoccupied in case someone from inside happened to be looking.

“What the f—”

Lucy set her head straight in front of her. She heard Arvin step closer to her, felt his presence flash near her. She walked faster and snapped her fingers at him, never sparing him a glance.

“Arvin, I mean it. I swear to Christ I mean it.”

Lucy didn’t look at him to see what he was doing. When she heard a car door slam shut and that now wretched sounding engine turn on, she decided to walk faster. The summer air felt cool to her, even if she did see heat waves dancing and creating a mirage on the black asphalt. There were only a few brief moments where she felt alone, where she didn’t feel his car slowly trailing after her. It crossed her mind to hook at right and disappear into the thick forest brush where he couldn’t follow her. The car crept closer and closer and Lucy realized he was stubborn enough to get out of his car and follow her or drive straight into the woods to prove a dumb point.

His window squeaked, “Lucy,” he called to her with a flat tone. She didn’t answer nor look at him. “Lucy. What the hell’s goin’ on?”

She didn’t look at him. She turned her head and saw that the diner was gone from view, even the slowly rotting wood holding up the diner sign was gone. Lucy looked back out ahead of her. Her eyebrows grew even heavier, the fear was gone and reduced to only burnt charcoal within her. She was left with anger. Anger that she would have to speak to him, angry that she even had to explain his own stupidity to him.

“Lucy, I know you fuckin’ heard me.” He called out to her. There was no bite to his voice like she had. Lucy pressed on, walking faster and heavier. The squeak of the Bel-Air’s brakes bounced between the trees and hung in the silence of the road. A car door shut and Arvin appeared in front of her so quick Lucy almost face planted against his chest.

She stopped—she had to—and slowly felt herself grow angier as she looked at Arvin. He dared to have a slight hint of annoyance on his face, brows pinched to give him wrinkles and arms folded in front of his chest. Lucy dug her canines into the tip of her tongue so harshly that she felt her taste buds grow numb to the pain.

“Lucy, what the hell?”

“You must be outta your fuckin’ mind to take that tone with me.”

_Tone?_ ” he scoffed, “your not my mother, what the fuck you talkin’ ‘bout my tone for?”

“ _You,_ ” Lucy began, “are the one who showed up, parked out front of my fucking work when it was packed full of customers. Are you out of your fucking mind?”

Arvin recoiled back, one corner of his lip pulled up in bafflement. “Is this what the hell you’re so mad about? That I was in the front?”

“Yes, Arvin!”

“Jesus, I fuckin’ apologize then,” he said with a scoff, “for your information, the reason I pulled out front is because I wa—”

“Are you fucking stupid?! You don’t even _get_ why I’m mad about that?”

“I get that you always want me to pick you up a distance away from work, but, God, fucking kill me because I wanted to do somethin’ special for you—”

“You dipshit! There’s a _reason_ why I ask you to pick me up away from the diner!”

Arvin threw his hands up. His face relaxed again. He looked arrogant like that, with his hands up and dismissive, while she was seething in front of him. While she thought she was going to get jumped for a second time because of him, and now he was trying to wipe his hands clean.

Lucy nearly jumped at him, poking her finger into his chest to get him to listen, to look down at her instead of trying to wash off her anger.

“Arvin, what the fuck do you think will happen to me if even one white person, let alone a damn _group_ sees me flirting with a white boy? What the _fuck_ do you think will happen to me?”

An expression finally came across his face again, he looked confused. He tried to put his hands on Lucy’s forearm, but she jerked her hand away.

“Luce, c’mon, those people in there, they—they wasn’t even lookin’ at me.”

“Yeah, but those girls I work with look at you. They look at you all the time.”

He had the audacity to smile, a wicked expression that crept over his lips. Lucy wanted to puke. She wanted to puke then she wanted to beat the piss out of him. Kick him in the ribs like Cindy and Elizabeth did to her, punch him in the face until he thought his eye was caved, just like she had thought. But she couldn’t. Even then, he would never understand the persisting undercurrent of fear that dictated every facet of life.

“Oh, so you’re jealous?” Arvin said. LIke slime.

“No!” Lucy screamed. “No!” she screamed again. She couldn’t look at him, but she had to. 

“Lucy what the fuck is _wrong_ with you!” Arvin wasn’t screaming but he yelled, loud enough for Lucy to gasp. “All I was—”

“Arvi—"

“No, _you_ listen,” His voice was calm, but it sizzled as it passed between his teeth. “I’m sorry I was out front, but the only reason I was was ‘cause I wanted to fuckin’ surprise you and ask you out on a real date. For the first time. I have the fuckin’ flowers in the car and everything.”

“You idiot!” Lucy hadn’t even seen the flowers yet, but she wished she could tear them to pieces and throw them into Arvin’s face. “You remember that black eye I had? Huh?!”

Arvin said nothing and it only pissed her off more.

“That was because my coworkers saw _you_ with me! They saw _me_ get into your car. That’s all it fucking took for them to beat the piss out of me! What the _fuck_ do you think would happen to me if they saw me get into your car today?!”

Arvin said nothing to her. His inaction made a cold wash over her for the first time that day. He didn’t move. He was indifferent this time, it appeared to her, before his face softened. He opened his mouth to speak, but she didn’t want to hear his voice for another second.

“Or are you just too fucking braindead to only think consequences are real when they happen to you?”

Arvin still didn’t say anything. His arms dropped, hanging at his sides. The way his brows raised and he suddenly looked like the boy he usually was around her made Lucy think he finally got it. Her anger was still spitting, but she was cool now. Not even the breeze made the leaves rustle, the squirrels tiptoed around them. Her ears rang. She didn’t feel herself inhale nor exhale. The air between them wasn’t thick: it was gone.

“What was your date plan?” Lucy said, letting her venom bleed from her and into the space between their bodies. “Gonna take me out downtown on a Saturday night? See if they’ll sit us at a table somewhere?”

“Lucy, you—you never told me that those girls did that to you because of me."

Lucy turned away from him, “well, forgive me for thinking you’d get it.”

“Lucy, I’m. I’m so sorry.”

“Look, Arvin,” Lucy kept her back to him. She pressed the heels of her palms against her cheekbones. “Stringing me along is one thing, doing whatever the hell we’re doing is one thing. But it’s another when my safety an—and my job is at risk. Play colorblind all you want, but even foolin’ around comes with responsibility in a place like this.”

“Lucy, I really am—”

Lucy spun around. Arvin’s face looked red. His hair moved with the stroke of the wind. Lucy slowly started to walk past him and he did not follow. She was nearly to the curve of the road when she heard Arvin’s voice, coming out like an afterthought. It came to her softly for the first time since she’d known him.

“I was gonna to take you to the river. There’s a clearing not far from my church. I was gonna ask you to go with me this weekend, before the sun went down. Picnic and everythin’. Thought you could wear that swimsuit. The one when you complained that your Momma never let you wear. I wanted to see it on you.”

Lucy turned around. They were miles apart, two silhouettes waving with the heat, perpetual to the dismissal of a unified existence.

“What time?” She whispered.

He still heard her.

“Five.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the mention of Mary Jane was not a ref to spiderman. None of this matters but i just had to put it out there. in the book arvin has a girlfriend named mary jane turner but they really dont do much
> 
> [twitter,](https://twitter.com/nsfcypher) do not follow or interact there if you're under 18. thanks


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